Thanks for your comment, Joanna Pearlstein. I certainly realize magazines with longer lead times tend to have better fact-checking then daily newspapers for obvious reasons. Unfortunately, the news that we act upon comes most often from those same newspapers.
As for whether I was extrapolating from two incidents, sorry. I just found those (out of many) amusing.
When it comes to absence of fact-checking, by the way, the Hollywood Studios are extraordinarily lax, at least they were with me. The only thing they have seemed concerned about on feature films I wrote was whether I used a character name that existed in real life in the same city. For example, I had to change the hero of Bustin’ Loose from Joe Boston to Joe Braxton. Aside from that, I’m not sure legal even read any of my scripts before they were produced. (Maybe the should have – but not for legal reasons:))
