Why do I read this crap?

I have no idea why I read my local NBC affiliate's website. But this one is just brilliant. 

Blackshades, we’re not talking about sunglasses. I'd like to know what journalism school is teaching this sort of grammar. A comma here makes no sense at all. Are you talking to someone named Blackshades? That's all I can guess. In fact, the total opposite. So we're talking about the total opposite of sunglasses. Of course. It's a type of malware that has made national headlines, and is making some people think twice about what they do in front of their computer. Oh, right. Because apparently malware is the opposite of sunglasses. I can see the universe in which that makes sense. 

Nick Davis is an I.T. Security Architect at UW-Madison, and says it's easy for a hacker to break into your device. I love the fact that this journalist feels the need to use commas and conjunctions to join incomplete sentences. That's totally a thing.

"You'll receive an email from someone you don't know, but it will seem like a legitimate email. You’ll click on the attachment, and nothing will happen. But in the background, very quietly the malware blackshades, will install itself on your computer,” said Davis. I'm confused. What's with the comma after blackshades? And should that be capitalized? That asshole Davis must not have specified in his quote.

Blackshades made headlines last year. Complete sentence. Good job. After a college student hacked into Miss Teen USA’s web cam, spying, snapping naked photos and even blackmailing her. Not a complete sentence. Bad job.

"It allows an attacker to remotely enable your web cam on your laptop, or your desktop machine and then it sends pictures to them from a remote location,” said Davis. So you thought you should put a comma before or, despite it not being used as a conjunction, but you didn't feel like putting a comma before the conjunction and. I just don't get it.

It doesn't stop there.Well, I'd hope not. This would be a pretty short, boring article.

“I do all my banking online, like investing is online, I pay all my credit card bills online,” said UW-Madison student, Erin Jamar. This is a great quote. Note how the verb tenses stay the same, and there are no comma splices? Yes, that was sarcasm.

Once blackshades is installed, Davis says hackers can get to those too. So you installed blackshades, and then Davis said this? Probably not. Perhaps there should be a comma after Davis says. 

"You can't be 100% sure that your computer isn't infected, and I always tell people, if you can't be sure your computer isn't infected, you have to operate under the presumption that it is infected,” said Davis. This is good advice about anything. I can't be sure I really exist, so I should probably operate under the presumption that I don't. Or something. Also, presumption?

So how do you protect yourself from an attack? Um...scientology?

Davis says, the best way is to keep two separate devices in your home. Using one to surf the web, and the other to access sensitive accounts. No, guys. The comma should have gone after Davis says in that previous sentences. Here it makes no sense. Oh, wait. That second sentence isn't even a sentence. We've completely given up on trying to make sense at this point, haven't we?

"People need to learn to treat there computers as if they are underneath a public eye, because they are connected to a public network,” said Davis. I'm imagining a very large public eye with a bunch of people standing underneath it. Probably these people have there computers with them. Other fun fact: because does not require a comma. But let's be real here. That's hardly the biggest problem with this sentence.

A good lesson, but one hard to follow, in this complex internet age, where everyone thinks they're not the next target. I assume commas are like government budgets. It's the end of the article, and the guy has all these commas left over. If he doesn't shove them all into this sentence, then he loses all his commas for his next article.

"I would still have that invincible mentality. You know, it's not going to happen to me, it hasn't happened to anyone I know, even though it's obviously not true,” said Jamar. I don't know the point of this. Did this happen to Jamar? The article didn't say anything about her. In fact, the article didn't really say anything about anything. Here. I'll rewrite it for you.

Blackshades is a computer virus. It is bad.

I'm brilliant.

A Facebook status

I know Facebook isn't really fair game because nobody uses their best grammar/spelling/intelligence there. However, sometimes I long for a perfect world in which news organizations can construct logical sentences to make simple status updates. Take this, for example:

Here is a reminder to be safe when out hunting. It is day two and one injury has been reported. On Saturday, the Grant County Sheriff's Department says a hunter accidentally fired a shot into palm of hand. Police say was seat in an elevated ladder stand. He was loading his .45 semi-automatic handgun, when the gun discharged striking him in the palm of his left hand.

This is five sentences. Just five. Again, I realize it is unrealistic to expect journalists to be able to construct five consecutive sentences. And the first two sentences are fine. But then this happens:

On Saturday, the Grant County Sheriff's Department says a hunter accidentally fired a shot into palm of hand.

OK, I'll admit the capitalization here is impressive. I've made fun of our local NBC affiliate for that before. But nice job. However, halfway through this sentence they seem to have forgotten to turn their notes into complete sentences. "Fired a shot into palm of hand"? Possibly this is a traditional journalistic technique in this situation. To be fair, I'm not a journalist, so I may not know these things. 

Police say was seat in an elevated ladder stand.

Again, I realize this is a Facebook update, and I should really not be so hard on journalists. But it would just be so awesome if people who got paid to write or speak for a living could construct complete sentences. 

He was loading his .45 semi-automatic handgun, when the gun discharged striking him in the palm of his left hand.

I'm going to pretend that comma is after the word "discharged" instead.

Hey, local NBC affiliate. Good news! If you were playing baseball, your .400 sentence structure completion average would be awesome!

Snow

I know I'd go crazy if I posted every grammar error or stupid thing the news people wrote, but sometimes the stupidity is just astounding. Here's the weather forecast for today:

Light snow developing this afternoon, but amounts will be light.

If we read between the lines, I think we can assume the snow will be light.

Slow news day, I guess

Here's the main headline from one of our local news affiliates this morning:

Insurer: Car-Deer Collisions In Wis. Dip 1 Percent

A whole 1%? Well, damn. I guess we'd better write an article about such a statistically significant event!

Waiting at the bush stop

A headline from one of our local news stations:


Prosecutor: No Charges Against Driver After Fatal Bush Crash


This is an excellent teaser because I had no idea what they were talking about. The driver ran into a bush and killed it? Riveting! But here's the first sentence:


Officials with the Dane County District Attorney's Office said on Monday that they won't be filing any criminal charges against a Madison Metro bus driver in connection with a fatal crash last June


Oh, I get it. It was a crash involving a Metro bush driver. That makes perfect sense.


They've updated the site already since I started writing this post.

Commas are hard

Today's fun is from Madison.com. That's right. The Madison newspaper website. This likely was in a print article that went out to millions of people. Or at least 10. Whatever the case, these people claim to be real journalists who write shit for a living.

The thing about Owl Creek, it was brand new.


What the hell? This is not a complete sentence. What the hell is that comma doing there? You can't just substitute commas for words whenever you feel like it. That's not how sentences work. Do you see how this sounds stupid? Perhaps that should have been your first indication that something was wrong.

There are two acceptable responses to remedy this situation. The first one is fucking obvious:

The thing about Owl Creek is it was brand new.


See how that's a sentence? Isn't that neat how I did that? It's not magic. If you can't figure out the word "is," I'm very concerned for you.

Here's the other option:

The thing about Owl Creek: it was brand new.


Do you notice how I used a colon there instead of a comma? That's because using a comma is wrong. The colon indicates you're setting the reader up for something. What is the thing about Owl Creek? Intrigue and suspense! This is the purpose of the colon. A comma makes no fucking sense.

This was the opening line of an article. Seriously. That means this person probably read this sentence a million times and still found it acceptable. And that makes me sad.

Why is it always the sad articles?

Why do the news people always fuck up the worst articles? It's always the ones about dead people that end up having the worst offenses. This one isn't a grammar issue but just a stupidity issue:


Madison police Sgt. Bernie Gonzales said the man had been drinking with friends and went swimming about 40 to 50 feet from shore near North Henry Street. Friends soon noticed him missing and called 911. Alcohol is a possible factor, Gonzales said. 

Alcohol is a possible factor? You just said he was drinking with friends and then tried to go swimming. A possible factor? Brilliant detective work, guys.

It's not just our local NBC affiliate!

This photo caption was included in an article by The Associated Press in The Denver Post today:


John O'Brien, registrar of deeds in Salem, Mass., shows enlarged signatures, supposably by the same person and thought to be fraudulent.(Steven Senne, The Associated Press )


In case you were wondering, "supposably" is a perfectly cromulent word. Uncyclopedia says so. 


I hope the AP has embiggened your vocabulary with its choiceful languaging. 

Irrelevant information?

I think I could do an entire blog just on news teasers. Here's tonight's:


Plus, a car, possibly linked to a homicide, is located.


According to the rules of commas, we can take out "possibly linked to a homicide" without changing the meaning of the sentence. Therefore, the teaser for this news story could read:

Plus, a car is located.

Now that's a story worth reading.

Getting hit by a bus

This is not a funny story. It's actually really sad that some lady got hit by a bus and died. However, I know this will make us all tune in to our local news tonight:

Just in: Here's an update to the deadly bus/pedestrian accident last week in downtown Madison. We've learned the Metro bus driver has been issued a traffic citation: Failure to Yield to a Pedestrian.


Now that is some brilliant reporting, guys.

The undead

A teaser for one of our local news programs:

‎15 people have died from Heroin Overdoses so far this year, and the number is only expected to grow

No snarky response necessary.

Fun with pronouns!

It's our pals at NBC again! Here's a teaser for a news story tonight:

He's accused of killing her son and mother in a crash. But the suspect just wheeled himself away from the hospital.

I have no idea what this is talking about. Who is "her"? Perhaps that's the point of the teaser: to make no sense so we'll have to watch to figure out what the hell they're talking about.

Huh?

One way on Willy Street learn more about the project that could snarl traffic and impact businesses.


Could you please rephrase that in the form of a thought that makes sense?

No reporter bias

Just to show I have no reporter bias, here's an article written by someone I had not previously belittled. That is about to change.


Demonstrations are still going strong in Wisconsin. Hundreds of protesters rallied Monday afternoon in the Village of Mount Horeb.


At this point I'm thinking it's going to be a good article. This guy has successfully put a sentence together. Impressive.

More fun with NBC

Another brilliant day at NBC! I'm convinced I'm the only one this entertains, but isn't that the point of a blog anyway? So let's tear apart another horrible article!

Another brilliant day at our local NBC affiliate

Here in Wisconsin we have some awesome shit going down. Our governor is nuts, our state government is basically at a standstill, and our journalists are really terrible! Okay, I shouldn't be so hard on journalists. It's really only NBC that sucks, and likely this is more because of the lack of an editor than anything else. But that's not going to stop me from tearing apart horribly written articles!


Governor Walker's budget proposal means big cuts for public schools. Under his proposal, state aid for schools would by cut by almost 9%; that's nearly $900 million. The news has left many school districts around the state reeling.

Awesome news reporting

This is an example of an actual article printed on our local NBC news website. You would think journalists would be able to write at least remotely well, given the fact that they're journalists, but NBC does a nice job of proving that wrong. Some of their journalists have absolutely no grasp on the English language, let alone how to write well. Here's the article (with my notes).


Protestors Speak Out Against Gov. Walker's Proposal
We're off to a great start with a word misspelled in the title.

Is not doing something news?

I read a headline this morning that said:

No one is hurt after a vacant house explodes in Kenosha

Really? You might as well have said:

No one cares that a vacant house exploded in Kenosha