Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Osama, Obama, Obuggar: bloggers praised after CNN's gigantic gaffe...

A huge gaffe by American TV channel CNN was quickly jumped on by bloggers.

CNN managed to mix up a contender to be the next President of the USA with terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden.

In a story on the whereabouts of Osama, CNN mistakenly ran the caption: "Where's Obama?" over a picture of the terrorist leader.

Barak Obama happens to be an Illinois Senator, a rising Democrat star who is tipped the most likely challenger to Hillary Clinton for the Party's nomination for the 2008 US-Presidential race.

If he runs and wins against Hillary, Obama could become elected as the first black US President.

CNN promptly apologized personally to Obama for what they called a "bad typographical error" .
The New York Daily Post points out that in his latest book, Obama describes being told by a a media consultant in 2001 that his last name would cause a problem because it would remind people of the al Qaeda leader.

A spokesman for Senator Obama said,
Though I'd note that the 's' and the 'b' keys aren't all that close to each other, I assume it was just an unfortunate mistake, and don't think there was any truly malicious intent.

We greatly appreciate the bloggers and activists who brought this error to our attention and helped make sure it was corrected so quickly.
CNN's gaffe came as Obama (that's definitely the Senator not the terrorist leader) was apparently frolicking on a Hawaii beach, where he spent the holidays visiting family - and making his mind up about whether to make a 2008 run for president.

Trouble over Senator Obama's name may not be over: his middle name is...Hussein.

5 comments:

Seamus Ryan said...

One up for the bloggers Phil!!

fairdealphil said...

Seamus:

Too true...and seasonal greetings to the blogger from Waterford City!

Anonymous said...

Sounds to me like Phil has gone off to Waterford for the weekend.

All quiet on the blog front isn't it.

Has anyone been to the presentation on "An Inconvenient Truth" by Al Gore at the Drill Hall in Lincoln this weekend?

It was superb stuff and I have set up a blog on my web site all about it at:

www.geoff-brookings-political-blog.blogspot.com

fairdealphil said...

Geoffrey:

Not Waterford, but nearly!!

Norwich for night with friends on Thursday night then cross country to Cardigan in Wales for a couple of days with friends there. Great weekend. Just back.

Sorry missed the Al Gore presentation at the Drill Hall...i'll look up you blog tomorrow when I've caught up on a few zzzzeds....

Anonymous said...

Cool stuff.