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  • 2013-07-12 (xsd:date)
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  • KTVU Makes Racist Plane Crash Gaffe (en)
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  • One type of gag that has commonly been pulled on the news media by the public is pranksters feeding reporters fake names — appellations that look like real names in written form, but which form crude or nonsensical phrases when pronounced. (The name Heywood Jablome is one that has been used repeatedly.) In most cases reporters and editors catch the phony names before they make it to print or air, but sometimes they slip through without discovery, resulting in great embarrassment to the reporting news outlet. One such failure to catch occurred on 12 July 2013 when Oakland television station KTVU aired a report related to an air disaster that had taken place the previous week, in which Flight 214 operated by Asiana (a South Korean airline) crashed during an attempted go-around at San Francisco International Airport, killing three passengers and injuring an additional 181: Examples: [Collected via e-mail, July 2013] In their 12 July report, KTVU announced that the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) had released the names of the four pilots on Flight 214, and their newsperson proceeded to read those names aloud as they were displayed on the screen — even though it was obvious to many, many viewers (and therefore should have been obvious to station personnel) that those names were a form of low humor based on crude Asian stereotypes: Sum Ting Wong (something wrong), Wi Tu Lo (we too low), Ho Lee Fuk (holy f*ck), and Bang Ding Ow: KTVU apologized for the mistake on its web site, in social media, and on the air: The San Francisco Chronicle's web site reported that an NTSB spokesperson had maintained the intern in question was unaware of the offensive names and acted in good faith: (en)
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