DNC Salute to Vets Featured Backdrop Of Russian Warships

An anonymous reader writes "Our politicians, and their henchmen, at their finest! In an apparent error, the Democratic National Convention's primary backdrop for its salute to veterans, by a 4-star admiral, featured a composite warship backdrop, in parade review, as a sign of U.S. strength and force projection; unfortunately, all of the naval ships in the image were Russian warships."

Comments

This happened a long time ago

[Anonymous Coward]

The rest of the media already picked this apart weeks ago, and has since processed the DNC's effusive apologies for somebody's error in Photoshop.

Seriously?

Re:This happened a long time ago

[Tommy Bologna]

I used to be a staffer who prepared graphics for high level government presentations. I was hired because I knew what I was doing, and I'd have been fired if I made a mistake like this. Let me correct that -- I'd have been fired, my boss would have been fired, and the company for which I worked would have lost a multi-million dollar contract which would in turn place scores of other peoples continued employment in jeopardy.

To write this off as just some staffer's oversight displays a certain ignorance about how important presentations come together, how they're vetted, and the competency of people involved in creating those presentations.

Re:This happened a long time ago

[Anonymous Coward]

If you had bothered to check on the Romney story you would know that he was joking.
  But I guess just running with whatever the haters tell you is good enough.

Typical PR folks

[SplashMyBandit]

PR folks usually have a pretty tenuous grasp on the subject matter. Hence, to appeal to those concerned about defence they probably just used Google Image to find "warships", look for some cool looking ones (with lots of sticky-out bits) and slapped 'em in their Powerpoint presentation. Note: US warships look less menacing these days, their radars are the slab sided SPY-1 for the Aegis and the missile launches are build into the deck as the rapid-fire Mk 41 Vertical Launch System and similar. So they look less mean, but they are actually more effective that way.

If only this basic incompetence and lack of fact checking was limited to PR people. The bulk of journalists these days are also woeful in their fact checking. For example, in Syria they keep talking about "MiG fighters bombing the rebels" all the while showing videos of the L-39 Albatross trainer (nb: not a MiG). A small detail, but lets get the facts we know straight, yeah? What really worries me about modern reporters is that they get the facts I know about so wrong, so I figure that they are probably getting a lot of the other stuff wrong too.

The City News Bureau of Chicago was famous for their high standards of making the journalists check their facts. They had classic watchwords, like, "If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out with two independent sources.". It is a shame that proper journalism isn't practiced, is probably not that profitable, and doesn't really interest the general public (who'd rather follow a nude prince's private romp in Vegas, and the Duchess of Windor's poolside habits than any of the other things happening on the planet, both good and ill).

However, these people are not alone in their bad habits. For example, both climate change advocates and climate change deniers seem to cling to dogma rather than continuously checking their assumptions against old and new data. It's always ok to be wrong, you just have to be prepared to change your mind in the face of better information.

ps. I won't even start a rant on how badly informed most politicians appear to be. Clearly the skills required to enter office are not the same as those required to make informed and sensible decisions once you are there.