Lincoln woman to caption debate

LINCOLN – If you see “misunderestimated,” “Internets” or a few other Bushisms scrawl across the screen during the presidential debate tonight, don’t blame Peggy Thompson.

At least, she hopes you won’t.

Any infamous malaprops made by President Bush and U.S. Sen. John Kerry will be of particular concern to the 34-year-old Lincoln woman: She’ll be closed-captioning the presidential debate at 9 p.m. for the Fox News network from her home on Transalpine Avenue.

And because it’s a presidential election, Thompson, a seasoned broadcast captioner, desperately wants a word-perfect transcript.

“If it’s a person who usually speaks properly and they make one slip, you might want to clean it up, but if it’s a person that slips often, you would run it the way they say it,” Thompson said Tuesday, “especially when it’s a public figure and everyone knows that they misspeak.”

When presidential debates are rebroadcast, captioners’ mistakes are corrected, she said.

With as many as 100 million Americans viewing a single closed-captioned broadcast, there’s a lot of pressure on Thompson, said Peter Wacht, a senior director of communications for the National Court Reporters Association.

“One question might have to do with weapons of mass destruction, then Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden, and then it might shift to health care,” Wacht said.Thompson is primed to keep up with the shifting debate, Wacht said. “If Peggy is doing it for a national network on a national debate, she is one of the best,” he said.

Thompson, who works for the Virginia-based National Captioning Institute, can type more than 225 words a minute and has been rated at 99.97 percent accurate, she said.

Thompson also transcribed last week’s presidential debate and has handled televised presidential debates since 1992.

Of the candidates, she favors the speaking style of Kerry, the former trial lawyer, over Bush.

“He has a certain flow to his style,” Thompson said of Kerry. “He doesn’t use incorrect words. Sometimes Bush will make up words.”

The worst presidential candidate was easily H. Ross Perot, Thompson said. His rabbit-paced, jittery style and mangled syntax were a nightmare.

Thompson has a basement office outfitted for work. She sits in front of one of two computers – the second is a backup. The TV has cable and a satellite connection in case the cable dies. The computers have battery backups and four phone lines in case the cable modem goes out, she said.

When she works, Thompson keeps the television volume high so she can hear each word clearly.

The computer programs help prevent miscues by automatically substituting obscenities or accidentally misspelled words with others that sound or spell similarly. A hint? The replacements include “funk” and “ship.”

A legendarily bad captioning, done on a Titanic TV special helped propel reforms in how captioners do their jobs, Thompson said.

But she’s still a little nervous about tonight.

“I just wish I knew what questions will be asked,” Thompson said.