The mute button is still on at KTVU over its now-infamous Asiana Flight 214 on-air bungle (video here), even as the station sends three news producers packing over it. A fourth producer, said to be about to leave anyway, is retiring. Blogger Rich Lieberman, who broke the dismissals story, has the names here. The Chronicle’s Matier & Ross chase here.
Lieberman says one of the veteran producers wasn’t directly involved in the gaffe, but was let go for tweeting “Oh sh*t,” immediately after noon anchor Tori Campbell read the phony and culturally-insensitive names of the Flight 214 pilots on-air. Her job is said to be safe. (What, did you think anchors are supposed to know what they’re reading before reading it?)
Meanwhile, it’s arguable as to which has been more devastating to KTVU’s reputation, its preposterous reporting, or the head-in-the-sand response of news director Lee Rosenthal and the rest of the station brass, who apparently don’t feel they owe viewers an explanation about how something so ridiculous happened in its newsroom. Not that we all won’t know soon enough anyway, of course.
