Thursday morning marked Ann Curry's first day as the new co-anchor for the
Today show and perhaps as a way of moving on, the longtime newsreader is
owning some of her worst gaffes and had this bit of advice for aspiring
journalists: "never Google drunk." Curry relayed those words of wisdom
in the June 13 issue [1]of Newsweek, where she tallied some of her most embarrassing moments, including the one time she mixed up Wheaton Colleges.
As previously documented by Newsbusters [2],
during a commencement address to students at Wheaton College in
Massachusetts, Curry mistakenly listed famous graduates of Wheaton
College in Illinois. As seen in the following excerpt, Curry revealed
the reason for the error was she was a little bit too tipsy when she
prepared her remarks.
Probably my favorite mistake was not on television. Last year I gave a commencement address at Wheaton College. I prepared this strong speech that I thought would be compelling to the graduates. At the last moment, after dinner with my family, I decided to include a mention of all the great people who graduated from the school.
I went to the computer and added the names: Dennis Hastert, Billy Graham, Wes Craven. It was only later that I discovered that none of those people had gone to Wheaton College in Norton, Mass. They had graduated from Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill. I didn't find out about my mistake until after I walked off in my cap and gown. I think mor-tified is the best way to describe how I felt. I wrote a letter of apology to the school. I owned the mistake. I just wanted to make sure the students felt taken care of. In the speech, I tried to tell them something that would be useful. I didn't want anything to take away from that. And I learned a valuable lesson: never Google drunk.
- Geoffrey Dickens is the Deputy Research Director at the Media Research Center. Click here [3] to follow Geoffrey Dickens on Twitter.