News and Current Affairs

During the course of the 2006 NBA playoffs, I noticed that ABC-5 was giving updates on the said playoffs, a full day late. In other words, they were giving NBA game results, that have already been delivered by the other channels, published on the Internet, broadcast on a delayed basis by local networks, and dissected by employees by the water cooler, a full day before. And I thought, it couldn't possibly be worse than that. Right.

During one of the timeouts in the SMB-RB semifinal game last night, I was able to catch a news update from ABC-5, this time about the 2006 World Cup. Firstly, the newsreader, adeptly pronounced the name of the sport's governing body as fai-fa. Miss, it's fee-fa. Repeat after me: fee-fa. Secondly, Rio de Janeiro is not the capital of Brazil. Brasilia is.

I don't know if ABC-5 has a research department, but I'm really more disappointed with the second blunder above, than with the first (it's forgivable, we don't watch football). You really don't need to pass Social Studies, or understand what those big stars on the map stand for, to get the name of the capital of Brazil right. Any idiot, can simply watch that film classic, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, and get this little factoid right.