Another geography lesson - French style

After a geographical faux pas less than a fortnight ago when it mixed up Wallonia and Flanders during a prime time news broadcast during a report on Belgium, France's main private television channel TF1 has "gone one better".

This time around though it moved the map, so-to-speak, of Scandinavia by placing a whole country - Sweden - a little further to the East - in place of neighbouring Finland to be exact.

It happened during a report on Sunday evening on the French government's planned pension reforms as the channel was making a comparison with other European countries and in particular retirement ages around the continent.

After citing an example from Germany (correctly placed on the map) the report switched to Sweden.

But rather than showing the country of just over nine million where it should be on the map, the report highlighted neighbouring Finland instead, before continuing its two-minute-and-14 second-journey in Italy.

screen shot of TF1's Sweden-Finland map

An error which Jean-Marc Pillas, the médiateur de la rédaction de TF1 or the person responsible for handling viewers complaints, admitted was more than embarrassing.

"I am just as appalled as you are by this gross error of computer graphics," he wrote in response to a comment on the channel's site.

"All steps are being taken to ensure that these geographic blunders don't happen again."

This being the age of the Internet all broadcasts are of course retransmitted in all their glory - warts 'n' all - shortly after going out live.

So if you want to see for yourselves what French viewers were treated to you can watch the clip. At one minute and six seconds you'll briefly see a misplaced Sweden



The irony of this latest mistake coming so quickly on the heels of the Wallonia-Flanders muddle was not lost on readers of the Belgian daily Le Soir, many of whom questioned whether TF1 journalists actually checked information before allowing it to be broadcast.

And one slightly less-than-generous comment suggested that perhaps "the French had become the Americans of Europe" in their lack of geographical knowledge.

Last time around it was left to stand-in anchor Harry Roselmack to apologise for the previous evening's "serious mistake".

Eyes will likely be peeled and ears well-tuned to see how regular host Laurence Ferrari responds to the latest confusion during Monday evening's broadcast.