I was flipping through channels last night with my boyfriend, and we stopped on the local Fox affiliate to see the tail end of the news. The sports anchor was on, and was talking about all of the upsets at Wimbledon yesterday. He mentioned that Pete Sampras was unseated by a player who was ranked 145th in the world, and named the player. Then, he mentioned that Andre Agassi was defeated by a player from Thailand.
“I’d tell you his name,” the sports anchor said, “But I don’t know how to pronounce it and you don’t know who he is anyway.”
Um, WHAT? My mouth just dropped open. I couldn’t believe that I just heard that on a local news channel. Who the hell thought it was okay for him to say it? Yes, I know it’s Fox News (sorry, I had to get a dig in), but there’s no excuse for not telling you the person’s name because they “can’t pronounce it.”
FTR, the player’s name is Paradorn Srichaphan. I’ve seen a lot more unpronounceable names come out of Thailand. Come on, Paradorn? What’s hard about that? And he’s 65th in the world. So, it’s cool to say the name of the 145th ranked player in the world, but no one’s heard of the 65th?
So is this just dumb, or is it indicative of dumb Pittsburgh news anchors being slightly xenophobic? I’m angling towards dumb, myself, but that’s just because I tend to get too riled up about things. What do you guys think? Seriously, I’m still in shock that this guy said that.
(Mods, if you think this is more pit-worthy, feel free to move it. I don’t feel like I worked up quite enough bile to warrant that, which is why I put it here.)
Dumb, and typical U.S.-centric view that most newscasters (and people in general) have. Like there isn’t a world beyond the U.S., with people who have names other than Smith or Jones.
Well, I work at a local news station, and sometimes, the anchors and everyobody else around, just don’t know how a person’s name is prounouced. So, in order to avoid offending people by misprounouncing the name, they simply say “A local man,” or “A mother” and continue with the story like that if it can be avoided. Sometimes, you have to say the person’s name, and then they just give it their best and we take the complaints and correct it later on.
In this particular case, I don’t think it was racist, it was just this guy’s attempt to explain “In order not to offend anyone, I’m not going to try and pronounce his name because I would mess it up.” The addition of “You don’t know who he is anyway” is a true sign of his own stupidity though. He shouldn’t have said anything, just that “Agassi was defeaetd by a player from Thailand” and left it at that.
Well if it were me, I’d probably be upset, because I tend to be bitter about not being mentioned. And everyone likes to be recognized, even if do have unpronuncable names, because recognition is well…sweet.
But I don’t think it was horribly offensive. In the daily run of things, you know, it was small fries. Still…if it were me- neurotic that I am- I’d add the newscaster’s name to my list of people whose backs would go against the wall when the revolution comes!
A bit of both. I would have tried to pronounce the name correctly, just to give the player his credit, and then said something like “…and I apologise if I’ve pronounced that incorrectly”.
And speaking of mispronunciathions, back in South Bend, IN, I remember hearing a local news anchor talking about Our Lady of Guadalupe, and pronouncing it Guadaloop.
I wasn’t even Catholic at the time, never took Spanish in school, never went to college, and I just couldn’t believe that this person couldn’t pronounce the name of probably the most famous Marian shrine/apparition on the North American continent.
So, OK, he can’t pronounce the guy from Thailand’s name. He should have either found out or said “a player from Thailand” and dummied up. Of course, the “you don’t know who he is anyway” remark took it to a whole new level of dumbness.
well, my local newsgeeks often mispronounce the names of nearby cities (yes, in their viewing area). But, he should have made a stab at it.
a worser ‘just plain dumb’ that I heard was when Nelson Mandela was elected Pres. of South Africa, my local newsgeek offered up “this was the first time an Afro-American was elected president of SA”. we called her on it. She still didn’t understand what she said wrong.
I had a Mass Communications professor in college who informed us that when he was a speechwriter for a local politician he used to have to write any words of more than two syllables on the cue cards fuh-NET-i-klee so that the dolt could pronounce them properly. He went on to tell us that a lot of TV news stations use the same trick for the names of foreign cities, countries, people, etc. So either your local Fox affiliate doesn’t do that or the joker was being intentionally flip. Or maybe he couldn’t puzzle out the phonetic spelling either.
It was definitely dumb, and I’m pondering whether it was xenophobic as well. America does have a lot more names than Smith and Jones, but I doubt Mendez or Nguyen would have thrown the guy off. I think it would have been better for the sportscaster to take a respectful stab at pronouncing it. From my internship at a newspaper, I know it can be hard to find someone to help you with information at the drop of a hat, but if they were talking about events of the previous day, there ought to have been time to find someone who could help them out.
The “you wouldn’t know who he is anyway” is offensive, though.
The “you wouldn’t know who he is anyway” comes off as offensive, but was probably the idiot’s (unsuccessful) way of trying to humour his way out of the corner he’d painted himself into by not doing a basic bit of research and taking the five seconds he’d have needed to rehearse or write the name phonetically.
PARRA-dawn SREE-char-farn. How easy is that? Writing tricky words phonetically is a basic thing. If he’s stupid enough to ignore such a basic thing, my money’s on him being stupid enough to think his little quip was funny.
It was derilict… He doesn’t know how to pronounce it? Maybe he should use his journalism skills and find out! Or maybe he should have watched the tape. Fox probably access to it. I’m sure the announcers went to the trouble to find out.
“Agassi serves to whatshisname, whatshisname backhands…”
It’s not really sree-char-farn since ph in Thai does not equal ph in English. It’s (IIRC) an unaspirated p (put your hand before your mouth and try to say p without a puff. That p will be unaspirated)
Sounds really dumb… a newscaster like that would be fired here, not for racism but for ignorance.
However, sports commentators are a different thing. One of our most prominent soccer commentators (Heribert Fassbender) remarked during a wolrdcup game featuring South Korea: “There’s Lee at the ball. One of the many Lees and Kims in the Korean team… they’re all called Lee or Kim but are not related to each other”
To me, saying “Well, I can’t pronounce his name” and “You probably don’t know who he is anyway” isn’t so much offensive, but it’s really damned rude to the player. In other words, this guy is not important enough for me to bother even looking up his name, because I don’t think he’s well known enough to matter (or probably register a complaint and get taken seriously).
