KTVU's Rush to Break the News

San Francisco television station KTVU Channel 2 recently offered an apology for airing fake names of the four pilots on Asiana Flight 214, which crashed at San Francisco Airport on July 6th ("KTVU Apologizes for Airing Offensive Fake Names of Asiana Flight 214 Pilots"). Apparently, someone pulled a prank on KTVU, feeding them the fake names, and leading KTVU anchor Tori Campbell to read the names on air (read them out loud a couple of times; it'll become obvious that they're fake):

• Captain Sum Ting Wong
• Wi Tu Lo
• Ho Lee Fuk
• Bang Ding Ow

You gotta wonder why the station didn't phonetically pronounce the names before sending them to the anchor's teleprompter. My guess is that in their rush to be the first media outlet to break the news about the pilots' names, they didn't bother to check their facts. To be fair, they did call the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to check the spelling of the names, but the person they reached was a summer volunteer intern who wasn't in a position to confirm the names and KTVU didn't check to see what his/her position was. Still, all they had to do was say the names out loud, for goodness sake. The original broadcast appears below:

P. S. Here's Stephen Colbert's take on KTVU's mess up:

Apparently, this has been pulled from YouTube. Here's a link to it on Hulu:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/511370