Why did the news spell it Sezium (another try)

Factual Questions
1

The server ate my post yesterday, so I’m giving this another shot.

On The Daily Show the other night, Jon Stewart had a really funny montage about the hysterical news coverage following the dirty bomb scare. In one clip some network was listing possible radioactive elements which could potentially be used in a dirty bomb. One was listed as “Sezium”, which I assumed was a corruption of C(a)esium. Is this a spelling anyone has ever seen before? Or did whichever news show just not bother to do any fact checking at all? I do realize they were probably trying to get this information out extremely quickly (part of what Stewart was making fun of, actually) and that your average journalist doesn’t have a periodic table handy, but this is a bit silly. Please tell me they’re right and I’m wrong.

2

Your average journalist ought to have Google handy, and should be able to find “Cesium” PDQ. I vote they’re idiots.

3

I have never once in my life read something that has to do with science written by a journalist that was correct.

Journalists are simply incapabale of reporting on scientific matters. It’s in their genes.

4

No one spells it like that. This page has spellings from around the world, and the closest is “Sezyum”, in Turkish.

5

Hijack: when I was taking chemistry classes in Naval Nuclear power school in 1981, the lieutenant teaching the class always pronounced it “Seize-me-um”.

6

It’s a fake news item on a comedy show. Somebody thought it would be funny. Probably a gag that was whooshed or bombed (not DIRTY bombed, just not ACTUALLY funny). My $.02