Goofs

When Tom is coaching Aaron on anchoring, he turns the camera on himself and adjusts it. Then a cameraman appears, then disappears.

When Tom and Jane return from their first dinner together, Tom is walking backwards and is just about to hit his head on a low archway, yet in the next shot he is still several feet away from it.

Just before the Libya news broadcast, Tom is visible already seated at the anchor desk on the control room monitors. In the next scene we see him arriving and sitting down.

During the special report, Jane is seen yelling by phone at field producer Estelle about finding a parking spot, presumably so her crew can provide their portion of the report. Immediately after that phone conversation, however, Jane tells Tom to fill for a minute and then tells him to wrap it up. There is no other mention of Estelle's segment of the report.

The position of Tom's jacket collar is inconsistent in the airport scene when Jane and Tom argue.

The surnames of both Joan Cusack and John Cusack are misspelled "Cusak" in the end credits. This is particularly unusual given that Joan's name is spelled correctly in the opening credits.

After the special report is completed, everyone heads out to have a drink and celebrate. In reality, all of the reporters would have had to continue working long enough to produce a report for the evening news - even on a Sunday.

In 1965 a 15 year old Aaron tells his bullies that they will ever make more than $19,000 a year as if it were meant to be an insult. $19,000 in 1965 is the same as $176,000 today.

Aaron says Tom will "coax along, flash over substance." He means "coast along."

In context, the word "coax" is not a mistake -- this misunderstands what Aaron is trying to say. What he means is that anchormen like Tom will gradually coax viewers into accepting "flash over substance" in news reporting.

As Jane approaches the restaurant to meet the gang for drinks, William Hurt (Tom) peeks around the corner early and realizes he jumped his cue. He quickly pulls back, then he and Jennifer walk around the corner as if they had just left.

When editing the mercenary footage, Bobby didn't dub the edited spot to video cassette before handing it off to be inserted into the broadcast feed.

During the special report, towards the end there is a close-up of the air monitor and the New York satellite return monitor. Both monitors are in perfect synchronization. If the satellite return was indeed a true satellite return (and probably analog at the time) there would have been at least a 1 1/2 to 2 second delay due to the latency of transmitting and receiving the satellite feed. Odds are most DC bureaus were connected to New York via AT&T longlines as fiber wasn't really in vogue at the time.

Although it's not made clear, among the last scenes of the movie is Tom on a mobile lounge, which takes on passengers at the terminal and then lowers to travel. Tom's lounge moves away from the camera without first lowering. These mobile lounges, once a notable feature at Dulles International Airport (IAD) in northern Virginia, were also used at other airports, in this case at Baltimore-Washington International Airport (BWI) in Maryland.

When Jane realizes Tom has faked his response to the rape victim, she puts her hands up to her face. Her wristwatch is visible and the second hand is not moving.

When Jane is in the studio control booth talking to Tom via his earpiece, she tells him to ask the pilot how he knows he has a hit. Her voice can be heard in his earpiece before she says the words in the booth.

When Jane is giving the cab driver direction to the bar to meet her co-workers after the special report, the directions make no sense. She says "Capp's Bar" is on 17th & Vermont. There is no 17th & Vermont, the two streets do not intersect. Also Jane says "take Connecticut over to 15th and then straight down Vermont and we should bypass Thomas Circle". Connecticut and 15th do not intersect and going straight down Vermont will take you right through Thomas Circle, not around it.

When Aaron and Tom are talking at the party, Tom claims that he would never pretend to know more than he really did. A few moments later Aaron shows him up as a fraud when he asks if Tom can name all the members of the President's cabinet. When Tom claims to know all the names, Aaron asks him "All twelve?". When Tom answers yes, Aaron delivers the 'gotcha' comeback "There's only ten." In fact there were 13 cabinet secretaries at the time the movie was made (the secretaries of State, Treasury, Defense, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, Health & Human Services, Housing & Urban Development, Transportation, Energy, and Education, and the Attorney General). Since the film's release, two more secretaries have been added (Veteran's Affairs and Homeland Security).