Correct ID - Kent Ninomiya

Kent Ninomiya - You can never be too sure when it comes to correctly identifying the people we show on the air. The history of broadcasting is full of examples of botched identifications. Remember the taxi driver identified as a terrorist on network news because he had the same name? Who knew Mohammad was a common name in the Middle East? The latest example of a mix up comes from Colorado. Take a look at these two gentlemen. The one on the left is Representative Terrance Carroll, a member of the Colorado legislature. His picture appeared twice on over the shoulder graphic on a Colorado morning news broadcast. The problem... the story was actually about the election of Colorado's first black Senate President Senator Peter Groff. He's the guy on the right. What compounds this error is the fact that there are exactly two African Americans in the Colorado legislature. You would think journalists at the station would know who they are. Groff made a joke about the mistake saying "There are two African-American males (in the legislature), so they had a 50-50 shot." While no one was gravely harmed by this mix up, don't allow that to minimize the significance. What if the story was about a criminal charge, or victim, or terrorism? Lives can be ruined and lawsuits filed over innocent mistakes. It is up to everyone in the newsroom to check, double check, and triple check facts and photos. How many people must have seen that incorrect graphic before it was pulled from the air? Someone needed to speak up. Once I had a graphic pulled seconds before it aired because it spelled the capital of South Korea as "Sole." How stupid would I have looked if that got on the air? Kent Ninomiya