Saturday, July 13, 2013

Racist fun with Asiana crash

The Eagles told us that "it's interesting when people die," but Reuters tells us (via HuffPo), it's amusing when Asian people die.

Head-shakingly, mind-bogglingly offensive shit you wish someone had merely made up:
The National Transportation Safety Board apologized on Friday after an intern mistakenly confirmed to a local television station racially offensive fake names for the pilots of an Asiana flight that crashed in San Francisco.

"The National Transportation Safety Board apologizes for inaccurate and offensive names that were mistakenly confirmed as those of the pilots of Asiana flight 214, which crashed at San Francisco International Airport on July 6," the NTSB said in a statement.

"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.

The crash of the Boeing 777 plane resulted in the deaths of three teenage girls in a group of students from eastern China who were visiting the United States for a summer camp, one of whom died on Friday in the hospital. Over 180 passengers and crew members were injured.

On Friday, an anchor for Oakland, California, station KTVU read a list of the supposed names of the pilots of the South Korean carrier on its noon broadcast after an employee apparently called the NTSB seeking to verify them.

The names appear to mock the events of the crash. The prank names were: Captain Sum Ting Wong, Wi Tu Lo, Ho Lee Fuk and Bang Ding Ow.

KTVU anchor Tori Campbell later came back in the same newscast and told viewers the names "were not accurate despite an NTSB official in Washington confirming them late this morning."
Here's a video of the newscast, again courtesy of HuffPo:



Seriously? In 2013, after a crash that resulted in the death of three teenage girls (one of whom was killed by an emergency response vehicle)? I hope this follows you around for a long, long time, you racist piece of crap intern. [UPDATE: Courtesy of Hannah Bae's Twitter feed, it appears the intern may not have been at NTSB but KTVU itself. I agree with one of the commenters that this is a reflection of the deterioration of the broadcast news industry; I used to do two news programs a day, and this would have had red flag going up for me such that I never would have said this on the air.]

Also courtesy of HuffPo, here is a animated version of the crash:



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