Thanks to Rich Lieberman who blogs about media in the area, more information is coming out about how exactly those fake Asian pilot names wound up making it to air on the KTVU news.
It turns out that the names were read out loud after all and even flagged as suspect by at least one person before the broadcast, but because they were said to have come from an NTSB official and may have also been passed along by a source that had been good in the past, the decision was made not to question them and just go with it.
And that right there is one of the dangers of wanting to be first with a story. Slow and steady wins the race, as the saying goes. Slow and steady also doesn’t have to worry about a tarnished reputation, offending potentially millions of people and nearly getting sued by Asiana airlines.
Hopefully a lesson was learned here, but I’m not about to kill myself holding my breath.