My former boss at WNYT, Tom Raponi, was in the news this week!
The TV station he runs, KTVU, is the one that made the ridiculous Asiana pilot name blunder. Now they’re trying to erase their mistake by forcing YouTube to remove the video of his anchors announcing the fake — and mildly racist — names of the flight crew. Raponi told TV Spy:
“The accidental mistake we made was insensitive and offensive. By now, most people have seen it. At this point, continuing to show the video is also insensitive and offensive, especially to the many in our Asian community who were offended. Consistent with our apology, we are carrying through on our responsibility to minimize the thoughtless repetition of the video by others.â€
Thanks to Tom Raponi for protecting us from insensitive and offensive content — but it seems the horse is already far away from the barn:
What now? KTVU has fired everyone involved. This is too bad, because Raponi had been very happy with the station’s coverage — before all that falsely confirmed fake racist Asian name stuff. Oh, well. You try running a TV station.
Proud of @ktvu team coverage of #sfocrash – even @ABC used our chopper http://t.co/jdtG2dwdU0
— Tom raponi (@BaseballTom36) July 9, 2013
KTVU’s fake racist Asian name should be Wi Suk Dik.
The interesting thing about this story is that KTVU still hasn’t said who supplied the false names. Probably because they don’t know who it was.
Some reports have mistakenly suggested that the gag names came from the infamous NTSB intern, but the intern only confirmed the names. Can we really blame a summer intern?
The people at KTVU responsible for this mess are seriously stupid and deserved to lose their jobs.