Why are American news producers so ignorant? See link inside question?

They have to appeal to their audience.

In America if the “main” system of disseminating information gets something wrong, it will be reported incorrectly on many many news outlets until someone finally does a big correction. How they spell and pronounce a city often depends on what information is being told to the, by a sort of central system. I assume it is like that in most countries.

I would bet if something disasterous happened in Toledo, Ohio in America (God Forbid) most of Europe would be callng it Toe-lay-doe. My only point is mistakes probably happen all over the world. Although, some mistakes certainly are bigger than others. Not knowing where Perth is, is a pretty big faux pas.

I don’t know how much geography is taught in journalism degrees. I would hope a lot. But, my girlfriend who has a degree and was an anchor on the news for many years here in America didn’t know Brazilians speak Portuguese not Spanish when we were in our twenties and used to call Hispanics all with of the border Mexicans no matter what country they were from. She knows better now. She wasn’t a producer, just a reporter, on local news.

It is embarrassing to those of us who learned a bit of geography growing up. The US education system routinely scores very low in Geography; most people here have a hard time with even basics, like knowing France is in Europe, or that Malaysia is not part of India.

Your statement they are ignorant of anything outside their own shores……… is overly generous; CNN and FOX routinely mess up maps and diagrams in the US.

Live TV is prone to making mistakes. Graphics are put together hastily and then reused. It’s simply one of the problems with breaking news.

Americans get criticized about not knowing geography well, but our country is huge, which I think counts for something. Knowing our own country is a lot of material to begin with.

To most Americans, Australia might as well be the moon…

Who said news producers should be smart?
The only people who need to be smart are the consumers of “corporate news”.

@JLeslie “Americans get criticized about not knowing geography well, but our country is huge, which I think counts for something. Knowing our own country is a lot of material to begin with.”

Unfortunately many Americans have a poor grasp of even American geography.

It’s a direct result of a dearth of social studies in US schools.

@Darth_Algar Probably true. I really don’t know how a high school student in America compares to a high school student in western Europe regarding geography. If we count the European Union as Equivalent to America in terms of knowing mountain ranges, cities, capital cities, rivers, lakes, oceans, how does everyone do? I don’t know. Even adults, I am not sure. How many people who are not American know DC is not a state? Do they know where it is on a map? I don’t think there is anything wrong with someone from Australia having to pull out a map to see exactly where DC is, or with not knowing it is unique being a city that is not a part of state.