Although details are still not exactly clear as to how exactly racist fake pilots’ names for Asiana Airlines made it on air on local noon broadcast for San Francisco Bay Area Fox affiliate KTVU, there have been consequences for a few involved in the incident:
“Station sources confirmed late Wednesday that investigative producer Roland DeWolk, special projects producer Cristina Gastelu and producer Brad Belstock were all sent packing following an in-house investigation into the July 12 broadcast of four fake names of the pilots involved in the Asiana Flight 214 crash at San Francisco International Airport on July 6. A fourth – noon news producer Elvin Sledge – told colleagues he was leaving for health reasons.”
And apparently, these firings may not be the end of things.
Also, according to the San Francisco Chronicle sources, the fake names – which had been previously posted on the Internet days before the false reporting on KTVU, came to the KTVU via e-mail from an expert source who had provided information to the station in the past. So either that source was trying to punk KTVU (which seems somewhat doubtful) or that “expert” also got duped. In either case, KTVU’s rush to report contributed to reporting the obviously fake names is a definite #fail on their part.
As I had blogged earlier, the NTSB intern who had confirmed the fake names, had been fired. The Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) had also met with KTVU to express their concern over the broadcast and continue to follow-up with the issue with them. This is still an on-going story and issue that will not stop for KTVU until the full investigation and facts are uncovered and made transparent to the public.
