KTVU-TV apologizes after falling for racist prank, According to USA Today on Saturday, Fox television’s San Francisco Bay Area affiliate - KTVU Channel 2 – and the National Transportation Safety Board apologized profusely for a live television error made on Friday.
Anchorwoman Tori Campbell made the embarrassing blunder – which had incredibly racist overtones against Asians – during the Friday news broadcast that aired at noon.
When Campbell was reading a story about the crash of Asiana flight 214, she read the prank names of the pilots that she was given – as the names appeared on viewers’ television screens alongside a photo of the burned plane. Campbell asserted that KTVU had just learned the names of the four pilots who were on board the Asiana flight that had crashed at San Francisco International Airport a week prior.
The names she read from her teleprompter which were splashed across the televisions were obviously a prank. The names she read were: Sun Ting Wong, Wi Tu Lo, Ho Lee Fuk, and Bang Ding Ow.
The names allegedly originated from a poor-taste online joke. KTVU issued an apology on the station’s web site which said:
We made several mistakes when we received this information. KTVU accepts full responsibility for this mistake.
Even though the television station accepts full responsibility, it appears that the National Transportation Safety Board was involved with the error as well. A reporter from KTVU called the NTSB’s public affairs office to confirm the names. The NTSB representative who confirmed the names was a summer intern. The reporter at KTVU did not get the name of the intern, and then hurriedly got the names to the newsroom in time for the noon news broadcast.
The NTSB also issued an apology for mistakenly confirming inaccurate and offensive names as those of the pilots. Additionally, the NTSB’s statement read:
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 does not release or confirm the names of crew members or people involved in transportation accidents to the media.
They went on to state that they deeply regret Friday’s erroneous-name incident and claim that appropriate actions will be taken to see such an error does not reoccur.
Sunday, July 14, 2013
KTVU-TV apologizes after falling for racist prank
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