WHERE'S ED MURROW WHEN YOU NEED HIM?

There will be a slight delay in the second part of entitlements. Due to, well I’m not sure, I guess a mini rant on the sorry state of American TV journalism, pathetic lack of common sense and stupidity in general.

Fox affiliate station KTVU based in the Oakland/San Francisco area did a story on the Asiana Airlines crash Friday. The “whoops” moment came when the names of the pilots and cockpit crew were read out by the on air talking head. I refuse to use the term journalist as a description. I’m not even certain that these individuals rise to the status of the old BBC term of news reader.

At this point no one is ‘fessin’ up on the original source for these names. There’s a lot of finger pointing. At somebody else. And a note to the unnamed source in the Wikipedia article. I did not have to say the names out loud to realize they were bogus.

I guess a station in Podunk middle America where I assume they don’t get too many Orientals in town might be able to plead ignorance, but this is San Francisco for cryin’ out loud. What? Your talking heads don’t read their copy before going on the air? And think to themselves “man this sounds like a really bad Charlie Chan movie”. They did call the NTSB, but give me a freakin’ break. If you want correct information, go to the best source first. That just might be the company that pays the pilots to fly their planes.

If Asiana Airlines is flying planes into Frisco I assume that they have a desk at the airport. There’s nobody at the station who could have taken their ten magic fingers, half a brain, gone to source and called the airline for the names? I mean, that’s the first thing I thought of and I’m not a TV talking head pretending to be a journalist. I’m not going to speculate why no one called the airline. Unless it was “I wonder if they even speak English over there.” (face slap, forehead hits the desk, over and over and…)

Anyway the names as confirmed by an NTSB summer intern who probably isn’t there anymore are as follows. “Sum Ting Wong,” “Wi Tu Lo.” “Ho Lee Fuk” and “Bang Ding Ow.” I could say that “ok, it’s a Fox station, what else can you expect?”

But, I’ve seen the same problems with our local news outlets. The closest I’m come to the news on KVAL since they fired long time anchor Shelly Kurtz are the commercials on Blue Bloods on Friday nights. I have to admit that their talking heads appear to have great teeth. If the smiles had more plastic in them I think I’d be grabbing the trash can. KVAL sold out to an out of state group several years ago and that group is in the process of selling out to some conglomerate back east.

Ed Murrow and Walter Cronkite we miss you. I mean we really, really miss you.