Is It Racist? News Station Releases Fake Asiana Pilot Names
On Friday, a Bay area news station KTVU reportedly shared this list of the pilot’s names on Asiana flight 214. Except wait, those names are OBVIOUSLY, OH MY GOD, SO OBVIOUSLY fake Asian-sounding names that also conveniently riff on the fact that potential pilot error caused the crash of a commercial airliner into the ground, killing two and injuring dozens. Wow.
The station claims that they only shared the names after they were confirmed by the National Transportation Safety Board, to which the NTSB replied, “uh, no, we never share that info with the press, duh.”
A few hours later though, the NTSB was forced to send out a press release admitting that the super unfortunate mix-up was in fact on their end, thanks to a summer intern who is either really dumb, or REALLY mean.
Via Gawker:
“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.
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 does not release or confirm the names of crewmembers or people involved in transportation accidents to the media. We work hard to ensure that only appropriate factual information regarding an investigation is released and deeply regret today’s incident.
Appropriate actions will be taken to ensure that such a serious error is not repeated.”
So, after all that he-said-she-said-mumbo-jumbo, we have to ask: IS IT RACIST?
In our opinion, eh, kinda. Whoever came up with those joke names is obviously a prick. But the main issue is the person typing up the title cards for KTVU. You didn’t realize they were all sorts of f*cked-up, dude? COME ON, YOU HAD ONE JOB*.
* – just kidding, it’s probably an overworked PA who hasn’t slept a proper 8 hours since he took this ridiculously low-paying job in the first place. Go take a nap, little one.
July 22, 2013 @ 11:21 am
Good point!
July 21, 2013 @ 9:41 am
In my opinion, it was a ‘racially-motivated’ incident, in that those names were actually released to the media by the (Summer) intern. Had the names been kept to the intern, there wouldn’t have been any damage done. But that person was being a bit of a dick to actually send that list out to the media, and should be disciplined to a harsh degree for that. Not jail time, but something to a lesser degree (suspended without pay, pay docked for whatever character deformation was done to the pilots’ (or their next of kin, if they didn’t survive the accident). Something along those lines.