ITN reports Korean border dispute but gets maps hopelessly wrong.

On 23rd Nov 2010, ITN's flagship prime-time programme Channel 4 News lead with a dramatic headline - "The most severe exchange of fire between North and South Korea since the war ended in 1953..."

Perhaps the most important basic information to report in a story of this sort is where it happened. In days of yore, the producer would have had a trained cartographer, who would have referred to UN charts, almanacs and standard atlases before tracing a graphic for a story such as this.

Not so in 2010, when it's much cheaper to delegate the work to a generic 'researcher' - often a student doing work experience, quite cheap to employ, protecting the shareholders' dividends at the expense of good reporting. Microsoft Virtual Earth, much beloved of cost-cutting directors everywhere, only takes a few clicks, a nod from the graphic designer and hey presto, there's your map of the border dispute.