Questions

Southern Man offers his deepest condolences to the families of those killed, and all of those injured, in the Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crash at San Francisco International Airport last week.

And now he has some questions for San Francisco news station KTVU and for the National Transportation Safety Board.

You probably already know the story: in KTVU's coverage of the accident they displayed a graphic with clearly-fake and offensive names attributed to the cockpit crew while a momentarily-clueless reporter read the names aloud:

The truly curious can probably find the original broadcast on YouTube but Southern Man isn't going to link it here; they're getting taken down about as fast as they're going up.

Before airing this report the station had called NTSB for confirmation of the spelling of the names. In fairly short order KTVU apologized for the error, NTSB confirmed that a summer intern had erroniously confirmed the names, and later fired said intern.

Southern Man has questions that are still unanswered by the media. Who conjured up these names in the first place? How is it possible that the person who created that graphic not notice what he or she was typing? And why in God's name does the NTSB, dealing with the first wide-body accident in the USA in years, have a summer intern working the phones?

Inquiring minds want to know!

Asiana Airlines is suing KTVU over the incident. Southern Man's prediction: they'll quickly reach a settlement and hold a joint press conference to announce that a large-ish sum of money will be contributed to a charity that is assisting the families involved.

[Update 25 July 2013] KTVU fires three veteran producers, sends blizzards of DCMA take-down notices to YouTube, and Asiana drops the lawsuit.