A San Francisco Bay area television station is apologizing for an on-air gaffe that has viewers outraged.
During the midday broadcast on Friday, presenter Tori Campbell, announced that her news station, KTVU, had just learned the names of the four pilots who were on board Asiana flight 214 when it crashed at San Francisco International Airport on Saturday.
She then proceeded to read out four fake names from a teleprompter whilst keeping a straight face.
The names, which may have originated as a joke online, were apparently given to the station by an intern working for the summer at the NTSB.
The names poked fun at the fact the plane crash as it attempted to land, but crashed as it came in too low and hit a firewall at the end of the runway.
The video of the cringe-worthy mistake has gone viral and drawn heavy criticism on the Internet.
The first name — 'Captain Sum Ting Wong' might have been a giveaway that something was not quite right.
However, with the camera's rolling and in the middle of a live broadcast, Ms. Campbell continued to read without so much as flinching: 'Wi Tu Lo, Ho Lee Fuk, Bang Ding Ow.'
After an ad break, the station was quick to correct the gaffe clarifying that the names were clearly wrong and blaming the National Transportation Safety Board for the incorrect information.
NTSB Public Affairs Officer Peter Knudson has confirmed organization’s policy is to never reveal the names of pilots in such instances.
'I don’t know who KTVU got them from, but we do not release names,' he said.
The NTSB has since confirmed that a summer intern - and not an NTSB official - 'mistakenly confirmed' the names of those on the doomed flight.
They said the intern 'acted outside the scope of his authority when he erroneously confirmed the names of the flight crew on the aircraft.'
Days earlier, KTVU news director Lee Rosenthal was crowing about how good his news operation had performed.
'Being first on air and on every platform in all aspects of our coverage was a great accomplishment, but being 100% accurate, effectively using our great sources and social media without putting a single piece of erroneous information on our air, is what we are most proud of as a newsroom.'
The station issued a statement on Friday afternoon acknowledging it had 'misidentified the pilots involved.'
In an-online apology, KTVU general manager Tom Raponi wrote: 'We sincerely regret the error and took immediate action to apologize, both in the newscast where the mistake occurred, as well as on our website and social media sites. Nothing is more important to us than having the highest level of accuracy and integrity, and we are reviewing our procedures to ensure this type of error does not happen again.'
Two teenage girls from China and another passenger were killed and more than 180 people injured when the Boeing 777 clipped a sea wall and slammed into a runway Saturday at San Francisco International Airport.
Based in Oakland, California, the Fox affiliate represents a city where 16.8% of the population is Asian.
KTVU also broadcasts in two heavily Asian-populated communities: San Francisco, where Asians make up 33.3% of the total population and San Jose, where 32% of the population is Asian.
KTVU’s false report comes after a week of speculating whether last weeks disastrous Asiana Airlines crash could be attributed to Korean 'culture' and whether South Korea’s tradition of deference to hierarchy could have played a role in the crash.
Asiana Airlines has identified the pilot and copilot as Lee Kang-kook and Lee Jung-min.
Coverage of the tragic plane crash at San Francisco International Airport, which killed three people and injured dozens of others last Saturday has proven tricky for some news outlets.
Earlier this week, the Chicago Sun-Times apologized for its front page headline 'FRIGHT 214,' which was criticized for sounding like a stereotype of an Asian accent.
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