Here at CJR, we’ve been thinking a lot lately about the informational implications of fragmentation in the news. So we’ve been appreciating the nice little metaphor occasioned by the appearance of Muammar Quaddafi [sic? maybe?] at the UN earlier today: media outlets’ wildly divergent–and yet, all kind of correct–spellings of the Libyan president’s name:
CNN: Gadhafi
Fox News: Qaddafi
MSNBC: Khaddafy
AP: Gadhafi
New York Times: Qaddafi
Wikipedia: al-Gaddafi
The Washington Post, however, wins some kind of prize for its employment of two different spellings in the same paper: Gaddafi and, in a reprinted AP article, Gadhafi.
Megan Garber is an assistant editor at the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University. She was formerly a CJR staff writer.