Anchor Reports Pilot Names Including ‘Sum Ting Wong’ and ‘Wi Tu Lo’

[nodoginnafight]

I'm thinking this got by more than just the hapless on air newsreader. A graphic arts person, and maybe the GA editor, whomever wrote the story copy and his editor, the aide or assistant who transfers the copy into the anchor's Teleprompter, etc., etc.

What I'd like to know is who thought up the names and what was their original intent? Was it just, say, a worker screwing around assuming a coworker would catch it right away, have a laugh, and then they'd substitute the real names, but something just went awry?

I read a report about a horrific sports story that made it into a Tennessee newspaper because the sports writer was joking around and the sports editor just ran it without reading it.

I imagine that the pressure of a 24-hour news cycle (and laziness) contributed to this one as well. I would assume that jobs will be lost.

 

[boedicca]

I just love this story.

It gives me a good giggle and brightens my day.

 

[nodoginnafight]

The intern didn't give out the names. So a news station calls some intern who doesn't know how to handle the press (because the people who do have a hundred other things on their plate) and he confirms names while searching for something on his computer.

Good points, but shouldn't the hundred of things on the plates of those who know how to handle the press, be umm ... handling the press???

 

[Pogo]

Asiana: NTSB admits intern confirmed racist pilot names
So it was the NTBS who was responsible and not KTVU.
However, those names should have raise suspicion as soon as they were read.
Another Government Failure
Asiana: NTSB admits intern confirmed racist pilot names - latimes.com

Let's not go off the deep end here, LA Times. These names aren't "racist". Bad taste, sure, funny definitely, insensitive, certainly. But making linguistic puns has nothing to do with "racism".

I mean Ho lee fuk, what did we just learn/not learn about thinking before going to press?

 

[blastoff]

Not trying to make excuses for those who might have been in a position to catch this before the anchor read them, but I can imagine in these PC days someone being so intent on getting the "correct" spelling of 4 Asian foreigners' names that maybe they just went letter by letter when typing or whatever, being careful, for example, it's S-U-M and not S-O-M and never took the extra moments to read or pronounce the words/sounds together that supposedly comprised each name?

Just a thought...

 

[rightwinger]

Not trying to make excuses for those who might have been in a position to catch this before the anchor read them, but I can imagine in these PC days someone being so intent on getting the "correct" spelling of 4 Asian foreigners' names that maybe they just went letter by letter when typing or whatever, being careful, for example, it's S-U-M and not S-O-M and never took the extra moments to read or pronounce the words/sounds together that supposedly comprised each name?

Just a thought...

Maybe for you or me

But attempts to bomb the media with fake names that sound like dirty words has been going on since Bart Simpson started calling Moe the Bartender

You would think the media would be wise to it by now