SEOUL: South Korea’s second-largest flag carrier Asiana Airlines Inc said Monday it will file a defamation suit against a US television station for its broadcast that critics say made a mockery of the deadly crash of Asiana’s passenger jet in San Francisco, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported.
The move comes three days after San Francisco Bay Area station KTVU Channel 2 aired bogus and racially offensive names of the four pilots aboard the jet during its noon newscast, citing confirmation by the United States National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
The station identified the four pilots as captains Sum Ting Wong, Wi Tu Lo, Ho Lee Fuk and Bang Ding Ow.
Asiana’s Boeing 777 crash-landed at San Francisco International Airport on July 6 (US time), killing two Chinese teenagers and injuring more than 180 other people.
A third Chinese teenager died in a San Francisco hospital on Saturday of injuries sustained in the crash, bringing the death toll to three.
The broadcast drew immediate public furor over the erroneous and what are perceived by some as racially offensive names of the four South Korean pilots, prompting KTVU Channel 2 to quickly issue an on-air apology.
“We misidentified the pilots in the Asiana Airlines crash,” anchor Frank Somerville said in an evening newscast. — Bernama
“We made several mistakes when we received this information. First, we never read the names out loud, phonetically sounding them out.”
He also said “during our phone call to the NTSB where the person confirmed the spellings of the names, we never asked that person to give us their position with the agency.”
Still, Asiana said it has already selected a law firm in the US and plans to file a defamation suit with a local court, though it declined to elaborate.
“The KTVU broadcast seriously undermined our company’s honor,” the carrier said, noting the legal action is designed to strongly react to the racially offensive coverage of the incident.
On Friday, the NTSB also apologised for the inaccurate and offensive names that were mistakenly confirmed as those of the pilots of Asiana Airlines flight 214.
“In response to an inquiry from a media outlet, a summer intern acted outside the scope of his authority when he erroneously confirmed the names of the flight crew on the aircraft,” the agency said in a statement posted on its Web site. “Appropriate actions will be taken to ensure that such a serious error is not repeated.”Also on Friday, the Asian American Journalists Association in the US said words cannot adequately express its outrage over KTVU’s on-air blunder that made a mockery of the Asiana Airlines tragedy.
The association said the fake and offensive names caricatured Asian names.
“We’re mostly saddened that a tragedy that took the lives of three people and injured scores of other passengers could be taken as an opportunity for an apparent joke,” the association said in a statement posted on its Web site.
The four South Korean pilots of the ill-fated flight returned home on Saturday and are scheduled to be interviewed by South Korean investigators over the crash, beginning as early as yesterday. — Bernama