A brief history of fatal bush crashes

Posted on March 5, 2007

Saturday afternoon I noticed the caption at the bottom of the CNN television screen said “Fatal Bush Crash”, while broadcasting news of the recent tragic BUS crash in Atlanta. Despite a brief thought that the people at CNN are so deeply and subconsciously programmed to associate the name Bush with the worst news possible, I chalked it up to a simple typo.

Today, however, on a whim, I googled the words “fatal bush crash” and found something very interesting. That headline just keeps being repeated, BUS crash after BUS crash. You can do a similar search for “deadly bush crash” and get similar results. Thinking that a typ o is a typo, I did searches for things like “deadly bust crash” and “fatal busq crash” and so on. Nothing. The only way that bus is ever “misspelled” in news stories is to make it “bush”. Conspiracy? No, certainly not. recurring freudian slip? I’m beginning to think so.

Here is a brief history of fatal bush crashes, working backward in time.

1. I note the March 3, 2007 CNN broadcast at 2:32 EST with the caption “fatal bush crash”.

2. HotAir notes that CNN made the same “typo” the day earlier, this time with the caption “deadly bush crash”. A HotAir commenter also notes that the Reuters headline that same day was “Bush crashes in Atlanta, 6 dead…”.

3. Also on March 2, 2007, CBS news sends the story out to affiliates, which is picked up by other news outlets, that “driver confusion [is] eyed in deadly bush crash”.

4. Also on March 2, the Huffington Post ran a story attributed to the AP, which seems to have been cleaned up after the fact, but these comments make it clear what it said at first:

Uh…that that should be ‘BUS’ crash, not ‘BUSH’ crash.

By: LiberalTexian on March 02, 2007 at 12:02pm
Flag: [abusive]
I know we’re all surviving the “Bush Crash” but I don’t think we can blame this one on him, can we? I can hear Hannity now.

By: geno on March 02, 2007 at 12:04pm
Flag: [abusive]

(Just by the way, why are those comments flagged as “abusive”?) So here’s the score for March 2, 2007 reporting of the BUS crash: Reuters, CNN, CBS, and either the HuffPo or the AP all made the same “typo”. Each and every one of them, it seems, just can’t distinguish between the word bus and the word bush. At the same time. That’s not a typo. It’s not even a trend. It is unanimity.

5. Going farther back in time, we find that CNN also captioned a story about a BUS crash as a “Fatal Bush Crash” way back on November 27, 2005. At CNN, if a BUS crashes, it is a BUSH crash, every time, period, end of sentence. Check out this link, and comments 32 and 33 and note the date:

To: GeorgiaDawg32

Today @ 6:03 p.m., CNN posted a caption below the anchorwoman during a story about a fatal bus crash, “Fatal Bush Crash” I kid you not.

32 posted on 11/27/2005 3:46:49 PM PST by gillies
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies ]
To: BushMeister

At 6:03p.m. EST CNN had the following caption below the anchor woman during a story about a fatal bus crash, “FATAL BUSH CRASH” What do you make of this?

33 posted on 11/27/2005 3:50:38 PM PST by gillies
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Another thread gives the same information and backs up the other commenters.

6. The first modern sighting of the “fatal bush crash” seems to have occurred at (you’re kidding!) the New York Times, way back on October 10, 2004. The funny thing about this is that you can only find it on a cached page of corrections, but isn’t actually correcting the “bush” “typo”. The item (you can look at a .pdf of it here; you’ll have to scan the page carefully to find it) reads:

“Corrections: Correction of October 10 article on fatal bush crash in Arkansas, which gave incorrect spelling of nearby city”.

That last item is just priceless.

If you know of any other, especially earlier sightings of a “fatal [or deadly] bush crash”, a peculiar typing mistake that only professional journalists seem to make, visit CourtZero and let me know about it.

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3 Responses to “A brief history of fatal bush crashes”

Lord Nazh on March 5th, 2007 2:06 pm

Just a note on the ‘flag [abusive]‘ in the comments, they aren’t flagged abusive, if you goto the site, that is where you can flag them as abusive
ArrMatey on March 5th, 2007 6:18 pm

Thanks for the explanation. That makes sense.
Sinfonian on March 20th, 2007 8:53 am

No, certainly not. recurring freudian slip? Iâ€™m beginning to think so.

Well, it’s hard not to make such a Freudian slip when faced with such a disastrous president as Chimpy.

Seriously, I think it’s like “Forth Worth” or other such typos. People are so used to putting an “h” after “Bus” that it comes naturally.

Then again, if you’re sure it’s intentional, it’s probably just like when Fox News repeatedly labeled Mark Foley as a Democrat, right?