Thank God I will never set foot in an airliner again! If only I had a quid for every time I'd said to a pilot: "Well, it's on the ATIS"... then there's the chaps who come on with "information Charlie" when it's "Mike"..... and "Oh, we thought it was 27L" when it really was 09L but they'd got the ATIS over North Africa and everything had changed.
Seriously, it's not the sharp-end ATCOs who are to blame nor those who record the ATIS. It's what is written down in the rules so they have to obey them. If there is an incident and it revealed that the ATCO did not ensure that the crew had the correct ATIS then he gets it in the neck.
Have any of you guys endured life without an ATIS? At previous airfields I have worked at and at Heathrow when I first started we had to read the weather and other information to every inbound! We'd wait if 3-4 were expected together, then read it.... and as sure as God made little green apples #5 would appear and we had to do it again.