According to both NBC News and CNN (and many other media outlets), the NTSB intern who confirmed the fake racist Asiana Airlines pilot names to KTVU is no longer an intern at the NTSB.
As I had blogged earlier, KTVU did apologize, but from a follow-up NTSB statement, it is pretty clear that those fake racist names originated somehow at KTVU and KTVU has yet clarified exactly how those names got on air. Someone last Friday was pretty clever to register the Twitter handle, NTSBintern , and prophetically tweeted what happened to the actual NTSB summer intern.
In related news, Asiana Airlines is suing KTVU:
“Asiana spokesman Suh Kiwon told The Times on Monday that the airline was planning a defamation lawsuit against KTVU because the company felt that the station’s “mocking” report of the bogus pilot names damaged the Asiana’s reputation. “The derogatory report defamed Asiana and its pilots,” Suh said. “We made the determination that it caused great harm to our reputation.””
As many have noted and I would have to agree with, it’s the crash that is damaging the Asiana Airlines’ reputation, not KTVU’s broadcast error.
