Don’t believe anything you hear, and only half of what you hear!
Just remember that sound advice when you check out any sort of news, including the Airline News!
Today’s silly article is about how the media can really get something wrong when they don’t check their facts – or use their common sense!
In today’s 24 hour news cycle, media outlets like the radio and television are always under the pump to get their reports out of anything happening that could be deemed as ‘exclusive’.
That means more eyeballs, and hence, more money based on the projected advertising dollars. The poor reporters and news room editors are probably thinking what the hell they’re doing a lot of the time!
However, this pressure to ‘get it out real quick, right now’ can really backfire, especially if your quality control or procedures aren’t quite up to scratch!
Anyway, the event in question happened in 2013 when an Asiana Airlines flight crashed at San Francisco airport because the tail hit a sea wall due to pilot error.
Unfortunately, three people died and almost 200 were injured. You’ll probably see this incident on Air Crash Investigations sometime.
Anyway, TV station, KTVU, decided to air a list of pilots names about a week after the incident.
It’s best to read these names out loud to gain the desired effect.
When The Media Really Stuffs Up The Airline News For You!
Okay, if you need the above translated for you literally:
- Captain Sum Ting Wong (Captain Something Wrong)
- Wi Tu Lo (We Too Low)
- Ho Lee Fuk (Holy F*%&)
- Bang Ding Ow… (say it out loud!)
Okay, this low brow humour is right up there with the Wong Fook Hing Book Store and the Fook Yew Hotel. But these place names were real!
You’d think that the news production process would have picked up these silly stereotypes, but unfortunately, this one just slipped through the net.
Apparently, some pranksters posing as official government agencies had supplied the names. But the television station did bother to try and verify them, but the so called verifiers (the United States National Safety Transport Board) stuffed it up!
They later apologised, and stated that the television station had been “misled by a summer intern who acted outside the scope of his authority”
I’m sure their procedures would have changed after this rather embarrassing incident,
Yes, it was rather unfortunate that the network didn’t check the facts before this piece of television gold went to air!
What other travel stuff ups have you come across in the media (apart from this website?)
Let us all know!
That is an epic stuff up! I’m surprised this didn’t get more international attention at the time of the OZ214 incident.
I know! So surprised this made the news! Imagine being a fly on the wall when this was being investigated!