TV station "identifies" SF crash pilots: Sum Ting Wong, Ho Lee Fuk, and others

It's a stupid news item to begin with. Weren't the pilots' names made public by the airline within a day or so of the crash? I remember reading at least two of them in stories early last week. Why is it being treated like breaking news on Friday?

That said, not having worked in TV news, how much of this is on the anchor and how much on the reporter and production people? Would this be something the anchor sees before it goes on air, or did she get halfway through it and get stuck having to finish it? Seems like there should've been at least two levels of vetting before it got to this point.

 

This is another example of a need for diversity in a newsroom. The names would all be Chinese. Do you think someone might have taken another look if it was an Air France jet and all the pilots were named Helmut, Bruno, Horst and Wolfgang?

 

Seriously, they do need to find out who hatched the plan (I would presume all calls to the NTSB are time-logged so it really shouldn't be all that hard) and publicly expose and fire their ass.

Yeah it would be too bad if some young smart-aleck's career was derailed and destroyed because of one dumb-ass prank, but you know what? Tough shit.

A lot of other people are trying to build careers too, except they don't intentionally fuck up news information. Go find another job. The world needs ditch diggers too.

 

Rusty Kuntz is not pleased.

 

Um, no it wouldn't.

 

To me, either the people at the station are dumber than dumb or they wanted a ratings bump. The former because we're talking about four names, supposedly with multiple people looking at them. If it's Ho Lee Fuk and three legit names, maybe that's understandable. But four names? That's what makes me wonder if it was done for a ratings/social media bump.

 

I figured Heywood Jablome was involved somehow. He is a Fuk Tard.

 

I've been wondering how in the world this made it to air.

A graphics person would have to put it in without questioning it.

A producer would have to put it in without questioning it.

The anchor would have to say it without questioning it. She is the last line of defense here -- it's on the producer and the anchor. But more of the anchor.

 

Well, it WAS an intern...at NTSB. Heywood strikes again!
http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2013/07/12/news-station-ktuv-punkd-over-asiana-aircraft-pilots-names/

 

It's not like they swore during a sportscast in North Dakota, after all ...

 

I've been grappling with this one a bit. Still boggles my mind.

I'm a producer. If there's a graphic like that one in my show, I'm the one who puts it together. On some days I might well be the only person who sees it or reads the script before it hits air. If someone thought this was breaking news, it's possible someone in the newsroom threw it together and told the producer to put it in, in which case the producer and anchor wouldn't have seen it at all.

In any case, though, someone got that list somehow, typed up the graphic and added it the show. The fact that the NTSB "confirmed" it is embarrassing for the NTSB... but ultimately anyone working in that position has to be smart enough to know "Sum Ting Wong" and "Ho Lee Fuk" are not real names. I mean, those are not going in my show. I don't care who "confirmed" them; those names are obviously not real. You'd have to be staggeringly naive not to realize that immediately.

I hope we learn the circumstances at some point. Some stupid stuff happens in a breaking news situation. If this was not "breaking" to the people involved, it's hard to fathom how it could have happened.

Some people here have very, very strange notions of how TV news works.

 

I'm sorry, but I thought of this thread when I drove past this sign about an hour ago:



Some of the backstory:

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/anna_griffin/index.ssf/2010/08/restoration_of_portlands_hung.html

The "original" sign from the previous location: