In a shockingly racist move on Friday, San Francisco news station KTVU misreported the names of the pilots aboard Asiana Flight 214, which crashed at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) and killed two girls from China. They reported that the pilot names were Captain Sum Ting Wong, Wi Tu Lo, Ho Lee Fuk, and Bang Ding Ow. An anchor later apologized for the error and laid the blame on an NTSB official who purportedly confirmed the names before the piece went on air. A spokesperson for NTSB told ThinkProgress that they never released any names in this case.
Whenever I begin to think that the state of our idiocracy couldn’t possibly deteriorate any more, it seems I’m (quickly) proven wrong. I can understand being “proven” wrong by Right-wing zealots willing to ignore objective truth and empirical reality in defense of their ideology, but I still (evidently naively) continue to cling to the belief that journalists pursue the truth. That means things like “fact checking” and “proofreading” would seem to be the minimum we should expect when it comes to journalistic standards.
Yeah…evidently not so much….
I find it virtually impossible to watch the segment without laughing. If you can put the obvious racism aside, it is pretty funny, especially when you consider that no one in the entire KTVU news operation picked up on the prank. What makes this sorry saga even more entertaining is that someone at NTSB actually DID corroborate the names of the Asiana flight crew. The NTSB is blaming the kerfuffle on an intern.
The last refuge of a scoundrel is blaming an intern, especially one who’s never afforded the opportunity to defend themselves…or prove that they even exist.
Wow. Just wow….
