Local Newscasts Need to Monitor Closed-Captioning Better

Posted by Joe Vandal
June 27, 2006

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I alway use closed-captioning when watching television. My hearing was damaged a bit in my military duties, plus it’s nice to catch all the dialogue in soft-spoken scenes. I’ve even discovered that many Simpson’s episodes contain double-jokes in the closed captioning that is as funny or funnier than what was spoken.

Usually our local newscasts do a good job broadcasting closed captioning text accurately to what’s spoken and in sync with video. Unfortunately, I’ve seen local newscasts occassionally contain disturbing words or phrases in closed-captioning. It makes me wonder if responsible people in charge are monitoring what gets broadcast in closed captioning.

I saw a really bad one a year ago. If I had been running this site then I would have photographed and published it. The other night one of our newscasts’ captioning contained a term that innaccurately described a situation in a potentially offensive manner, and the newscaster obviously saw it in her teleprompter because she hesitated over it and substituted a more accurate and less offensive term.


I have a DVR to rewind and pause newscasts, I have a digital camera, and I have a website to publish on. I implore our local stations to please monitor what gets broadcast in closed-captioning so nobody has to get embarrassed.

I also urge local news stations to better sync their closed captioning text with the video. Nearly every local broadcast contains stories where the captioning text runs minutes ahead of the video. It’s not a big deal to me, but if the closed captioning is for completely deaf people then being so far out of sync is a real disservice to them. Plus it just looks sloppy when I see it happen.

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