By now, I’m sure you’ve heard all about the Asiana Airlines continued debacle with the mis-reporting of the pilots’ names stemming from the horrific crash at SFO. Long story short, some yahoo at KTVU in San Francisco decided to exercise his or her (somewhat questionable) sense of humor and create fake names for the crew.
Like any responsible news outlet, KTVU had a staffer send the list to the NTSB for confirmation before the story was aired.
Here’s where it gets weird, the NTSB actually confirmed the made-up names. (A statement was later made that a summer intern had read and approved the list.)
The station ran the story, complete with the fake names, spurring an onslaught of negative publicity, including the announcement by Asiana Airlines that they are planning to sue the TV station for the offensive remarks.
From a Public Relations standpoint, let me offer my take on what might have helped.
(Before you read this, please understand that I make mistakes as much as the next guy, so I’m not judging at all, but this was such a huge rolling ball of oops with several sets of hands on it, I can’t leave it alone.)
1. The names should have never left the station. Yes, we have all made jokes that we don’t want repeated. Best way to keep that from happening? Don’t write them down, don’t email them, don’t post them anywhere. If it’s something you don’t want potentially shared with the world, keep it verbal. (There’s a reason the phrase “get it in writing” is so popular.)
But the names left the station. Swing number two at catching it:
2. The (I’m assuming former) intern at the NTSB probably glanced at the list, gave it the standard once-over and confirmed it. (Unfortunately, the names were in Korean, he wouldn’t have even known the correct spelling.)
So the intern approved names without checking with the airline. Swing three:
3. Once the “confirmed” list of names was returned to the station, a techie had to build the infamous graphic with the names, a copywriter had to post the information for the teleprompter, and the news anchor had to read it. That’s at least three sets of eyes that also missed this gaffe before it was aired live.
So what’s my point? All I have done so far is outline what most people are already thinking. So I’ll arrive: major mistakes are very rarely the result of just one thing going wrong. Situations like this come when the tiny details are either overlooked or taken for granted. (We pay attention to the big details, so they tend to turn out ok, but the small stuff…..well, we pass that off to someone who cares even less than we do about it.) Probably not our best course of action.
Now the chances of a typo or grammatical error in this post are very high, but this is a different animal. This blog is about what we’re thinking and doing right at the moment, without a lot of editing or finessing. But if we’re sending something to print, to air, or anywhere people might see it, that information is checked, double checked, and usually triple checked.
For accuracy. For spelling. For punctuation. For everything.
Do we make mistakes? Of course we do, we’re human. But we absolutely try our very hardest to hit the highest benchmarks possible.
If someone wants to proof this and send it back, please do.
Peace to the grammar police,
Scott
