KTVU Channel 2, a San Francisco Bay area news channel, has been extensively covering the crash of an Asiana Airlines plane landing at SFO. And bragging about their coverage.
On their noon newcast July 12, co-anchor Tori Campbell read out four names said to be those of the pilots on the plane. But they were four phony Asian names, the kind of dumb jokes that are hilarious to some non-Asian 4th graders: Sum Ting Wong, Wi To Lo, Ho Lee Fuk, and Bang Ding Ow.
Groan.
KTVU2 screen grab. Nice color.
It was pointed out that these are not real names. They got called racist. And stupid.
Here’s part of an apology they put up on their Facebook page:
In KTVU’s Noon newscast on Friday, July 12th, the station misidentified the pilots involved in the Asiana Airlines crash at SFO.
Prior to air, the names were confirmed by an NTSB official in the agency’s Washington, D.C. office. Despite that confirmation, KTVU realized the names that aired were not accurate and issued an apology later in the newscast.
The correct names of the pilots in the cockpit were Lee Gang-guk and Lee Jeong-Min.
“We sincerely regret the error and took immediate action to apologize, both in the newscast where the mistake occurred, as well as on our website and social media sites,” said Tom Raponi, KTVU/KICU Vice President & General Manager.
“…we are reviewing our procedures to ensure this type of error does not happen again.”
Oh, the NTSB said those were real names, but KTVU cleverly figured out they were fake, just a bit too late? I see.
A little later they posted:
As many of you saw or heard by now, we fell for a hoax and misidentified the pilots of the Asiana Airlines crash in our Noon news. Later in the newscast, after realizing the mistake, we issued an apology. We feel terrible about what happened and hope you will accept our apology.
The second apology is more humble than the first, and doesn’t try to put part of it off on the NTSB. Better. And the first did say they were going to review their procedures. (I would suggest they start by not going with any story with a URL beginning www.theonion.com, except The Onion doesn’t run fake news this stupid.)
NTSB chairman Deborah Hersman. Saying “Oh please” gives photographers much the same result as saying “Cheese.”
Okay. But what about that blame-shifting claim that the names were “confirmed by an NTSB official in the agency’s Washington, D.C. Office”
Did that happen? (Unlikely.) If not, did someone say it happened? Someone who works for KTVU? Or did the hoax come bundled with fake fact-checking?
It would be interesting to know, and if KTVU’s really humble, they’ll tell us.
*UPDATE! I was wrong — the unlikely thing happened — the NTSB did “confirm” those “names”. And blamed a “summer intern,” and apologized. See the comment below. I argue that they still shouldn’t have gone with the names if they found them suspicious… but maybe nobody did until they were read aloud. On the air.
Summer intern.
Image Credits: Photo by Anna Shvets from Pexels
update at http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-asiana-ntsb-admits-intern-confirmed-racist-pilot-names-20130712,0,4531421.story
“Late Friday, the NTSB apologized for the incident. “Earlier today, in response to an inquiry from a media outlet, a summer intern acted outside the scope of his authority when he erroneously confirmed the names of the flight crew on the aircraft,” the NTSB said in a statement.
“The NTSB does not release or confirm the names of crewmembers or people involved in transportation accidents to the media. We work hard to ensure that only appropriate factual information regarding an investigation is released and deeply regret today’s incident. Appropriate actions will be taken to ensure that such a serious error is not repeated,” the statement added.”
Wow! I’m amazed. Thank you for posting that.
A summer intern. Probably not likely to be offered a staff job, I’d guess. But as we have just seen, I CAN BE WRONG.
Should I apologize for my low suspicious nature?
I actually am stunned that the station was telling the truth about the NTSB.
Do not apologize. COME ON! They should have known they were being had!
Even if someone at the NTSB did “erroneously confirm” the names (which suggests that the NTSB wasn’t the original source), the station still has a major share in the responsibility. Anyone who has attained the level of responsibility required to write copy or design graphics for a TV news broadcast should be able to instantly recognize those names as the lame racist joke that they are
KTVU has added to their apology, pointing out two mistakes they made. We like that. That’s how you make sure not to do it again (and how others make sure they never do it in the first place).
“First, we never read the names out loud, phonetically sounding them out.
“Then, during our phone call to the NTSB where the person confirmed the spellings of the names, we never asked that person to give us their position with the agency.
“We heard this person verify the information without questioning who they were and then rushed the names on our noon newscast.”
http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/ktvu-apology-friday-noon-report/nYpSg/
Piiiiiiiiityfuuuuuuullllll…