News

“Coffee, Corruption, Donuts” – NBC 10 Apologizes for Airing Altered Police Department Logo

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Feb 12th, 2021 · 9:38 AM EST

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At the Philadelphia Police Department, the motto is “Honor, Integrity, Service.” Those are the three words written on the Shield.

Apparently some wise guy at NBC 10 is not a fan of the PPD, because on Thursday night an altered graphic appeared on the 5 p.m. news, with the words “Coffee, Corruption, Donuts” appearing instead on the crest and looking like this:

Whoops!

Well I guess somebody is gonna get fired for that.

Without going too deep into the weeds, I can say from my experience at Eyewitness News that graphics are typically built by an art department, and then added to the chyron system, where producers then manually insert the pictures into the newscast. So there would normally be a couple of layers of proofing here, a few sets of eyeballs looking at the graphic to make sure its correct before going to air.

I can’t speak for NBC 10’s process, but in most cases you’d have a producer check the work, then the executive producer takes a look to triple check before approving the story within the rundown.

Anyway, Commissioner Danielle Outlaw called the mistake “inappropriate” and “insulting” and NBC 10 offered this apology:

Here is the apology that we issued. pic.twitter.com/GcY8unCijT

— NBC10 Philadelphia (@NBCPhiladelphia) February 12, 2021

“We mistakenly inserted a parody version.”

Well that’s one way to say it. And look, Philly policing is a hot button issue right now, especially following the summer we had, with protests and rioting and tear gassing and all sorts of craziness taking place in the city. There are myriad divisive feelings on the PPD, but the bottom line is that trust in the media is at an all-time low, and when stuff like this happens, it just adds more fuel to the fire. It makes everybody in the news business look bad by association.