One of the worst blunders in American recent journalistic history took place last week at the San Francisco Fox News television affiliate station KTVU, a blunder so wonderful it leaves you breathless.
For those few who haven't seen it after it went viral on Youtube, some blow-dried bimbo gravely but excitedly announced the station had learned the names of the four pilots aboard Asiana Flight 214, which crashed at San Francisco International Airport on July 6, killing three and injuring 181. The real names of the pilots had actually been released earlier by the US National Transport Safety Board and reported by everybody, but never mind - KTVU had them as Captain Sum Ting Wong, flight officers Wi Tu Lo, Ho Lee Fuk and Bang Ding Ow.
Also never mind that none of these names sounds remotely Korean. The station checked them with the NTSB, where some cheeky intern apparently told the station the names were real and the blowdried one read them on the air. That presumably meant the names had to pass through several hands - the person who received them from a prankster and called Washington, DC to check them out, an editor who wrote the piece for the presenter to read, the person who uploaded the graphics and the news presenter herself.
The NTSB intern will probably be garroted, but he should be given a medal.
(...)
The problem is that what they are showing is not news. The local stations appear to have taken their cues not from the business of presenting news but from a long string of television sitcoms that started at least in 1982 with a show called Cheers, then ran through another one called Seinfeld, then into another called Friends. There is now one called Big Bang.
The formula is about the same. Put six characters on the screen - three males, three females, all relatively cuddly, and let them exchange wisecracks for a half hour, or in the case of the 6 o'clock news, maybe for an hour. There is very little actual news in this format. A fire here, a murder there, although they are very good on the weather. But if any of them has been trained in the actual practice of journalism, it doesn't show. Full story...
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For those few who haven't seen it after it went viral on Youtube, some blow-dried bimbo gravely but excitedly announced the station had learned the names of the four pilots aboard Asiana Flight 214, which crashed at San Francisco International Airport on July 6, killing three and injuring 181. The real names of the pilots had actually been released earlier by the US National Transport Safety Board and reported by everybody, but never mind - KTVU had them as Captain Sum Ting Wong, flight officers Wi Tu Lo, Ho Lee Fuk and Bang Ding Ow.
Also never mind that none of these names sounds remotely Korean. The station checked them with the NTSB, where some cheeky intern apparently told the station the names were real and the blowdried one read them on the air. That presumably meant the names had to pass through several hands - the person who received them from a prankster and called Washington, DC to check them out, an editor who wrote the piece for the presenter to read, the person who uploaded the graphics and the news presenter herself.
The NTSB intern will probably be garroted, but he should be given a medal.
(...)
The problem is that what they are showing is not news. The local stations appear to have taken their cues not from the business of presenting news but from a long string of television sitcoms that started at least in 1982 with a show called Cheers, then ran through another one called Seinfeld, then into another called Friends. There is now one called Big Bang.
The formula is about the same. Put six characters on the screen - three males, three females, all relatively cuddly, and let them exchange wisecracks for a half hour, or in the case of the 6 o'clock news, maybe for an hour. There is very little actual news in this format. A fire here, a murder there, although they are very good on the weather. But if any of them has been trained in the actual practice of journalism, it doesn't show. Full story...
Related posts:
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