Public Personalities: Please Practice Pinyin Pronunciation!

Why is it that professional sports announcers seem to work at pronouncing American and European names correctly (or at least approximately so), and yet butcher some of the simplest Chinese names?

The tennis player Zheng Jie the most recent example. For some reason people want to pronounce her name "Jang Gee". I'll be the first to admit that pinyin isn't strictly phonetic (better than Wade-Giles, though!), but you'd get closer with a phonetic pronunciation of Zheng than somehow substituting a hard "a" sound in there somehow. Plus, one would think large sports and news agencies like ESPN or BBC would have the resources to ask someone knowledgeable. Heck, if you ask her, she's happy to tell you! (skip to 0:35)

Honestly, if we can research how to pronounce "Krzyzewski", Zheng Jie and Yi Jianlian shouldn't be too hard, right?

For those interested, here is a nice web page with some .wav files to help pinyin pronunciation. The single biggest hint I can give to anyone: no hard "a" sounds!