Fact Checking
Q. Is there some sort of resource available with definitive information about names and titles of various media programs? For example, is Oprah Winfrey’s talk show really The Oprah Winfrey Show or just Oprah? Do Matt Lauer and Katie Couric appear on The Today Show or Today? Often there is conflicting information. An authoritative resource would be extremely helpful for the copyediting process.
A. My practice, increasingly, has been to track down the Web site run by a program’s owner. Some search engines are helpful because they have organized this information. For example, Google has a “talk shows” category, with links that pull together official Web sites for all the talk shows. Oprah’s talk show has its own official site, of course (http://www.oprah.com/), and according to that site, the name of the show is The Oprah Winfrey Show.
