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How Did This Ever Get On-Air? Asiana Airlines Says It Will Sue Cox’s KTVU-TV, a TV News Powerhouse in the San Francisco Bay Area, for Broadcasting Prank Names of Pilots of the Jet that Crashed at SFO on July 6, 2013

Jul 15, 2013  •  Post A Comment

"Asiana Airlines Inc. said a California television station ‘seriously damaged’ the carrier’s reputation by broadcasting incorrect [prankl] names of the pilots on its jet that crashed in San Francisco on July 6, 2013," reports Bloomberg.

The story says Asiana has "decided to take ‘strong steps’ to sue KTVU-TV because the report was racially discriminating, Lee Hyo Min, a spokeswoman for the South Korean airline, said in Seoul today. The company will take legal action in the U.S., she said." You can see a video clip of the report below.

The article continues: "KTVU channel 2 issued an apology on July 12 after its noon newscast that misidentified the Asiana pilots. The network said it made ‘several mistakes’ when it got the information, according to a statement on its website. Calls to the TV station in Oakland weren’t answered outside regular office hours today.

"The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board also apologized for ‘inaccurate and offensive names that were mistakenly confirmed’ as those of the pilots of the crashed jet, the Board said in a July 12 statement."

In its website statement KTVU said how the report made it on-air: "We made several mistakes when we received this information. 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."

According to TVSpy, the longtime industry website about local TV news, just a few days before KTVU aired the prank names the station "touted its coverage [of the jet crash] as being not only first, but ‘100% accurate’: ‘Being first on air and on every platform in all aspects of our coverage was a great accomplishment, but being 100% accurate, effectively using our great sources and social media without putting a single piece of erroneous information on our air, is what we are most proud of as a newsroom,’ said News Director Lee Rosenthal at the time."

Here’s the short video of the KTVU report. It’s been viewed almost 8 million times on YouTube:

2 Comments

  1. Are you kidding me?! Does no one proof read anything anymore? There is no excuse for this. They need to fire the intern, the editor, graphics generator and the news anchor since they are obviously sleep walking through their jobs.

  2. Um… No… crashing an airplane into the ground due to pilot error has damaged your reputation.

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