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Reporter learns the hard way why you clear your browser history

This is why the incognito browsing feature was invented. 

 

Fernando Alfonso III

Internet Culture

Posted on Feb 11, 2014   Updated on May 31, 2021, 6:38 pm CDT

It’s been a rough start to the week for local TV reporters.

During a report Monday on Chicago’s WGNTV a reporter whipped out his or her phone to show the software at work. As the reporter typed in the first few letter of the name of the app, the phones browser history revealed a link to Pornhub.

The report was supposed to cover Web app Expunge.io, which helps juveniles have their minor criminal offences expunged. All the attention naturally focused on the reporter’s flub, however. The photo made the rounds on Reddit where Pornhub’s community manager Katie jokingly confirmed that they had nothing to do with it.

“[T]t would have been the sneakiest product placement ever though,” she commented. “I did wake up to about five emails from colleagues about this on Reddit.”

While it may not make the producers of WGNTV feel any better, it wasn’t the only TV station to draw the Internet’s laughs this week.

In Portland a reporter was filming a segment on how joggers were coping with lousy weather.

“It’s the perfect texture for running, very low impact, and it’s dry snow so your feet don’t get wet,” an unidentified woman told KOIN News as snow fell around them.

The woman ran off, then slipped on a patch of ice.

The other local news faux pas came courtesy of an ABC affiliate in Detroit when they attempted to tally up country-by-country gold medal counts.

Geography lesson is desperately needed in Detroit! #Olympics pic.twitter.com/zPYKRZnaRk

— Brian Willie (@bwillie) February 10, 2014

Photo by sskennel/Flickr (CC By 2.0)

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*First Published: Feb 11, 2014, 4:09 pm CST