Late yesterday, Asiana Airlines announced that it will sue Bay Area Fox affiliate KTVU for its airing of fake and racially offensive names of the pilots aboard Asiana Flight 214.
The airline announced Monday that it had retained lawyers and planned to sue KTVU-TV, which Friday wrongly identified the pilots as "Captain Sum Ting Wong" and "Wi Tu Lo."
[snip]
"The derogatory report defamed Asiana and its pilots," Asiana spokesman Suh Ki-won said. "We made the determination that it caused great harm to our reputation."
While there's no dispute KTVU dropped the ball, some crisis management experts think this suit is a public relations fail.
"It's probably something they should have taken a deep breath and thought long and hard about," said Allan Mayer, a crisis management consultant and partner at New York-based firm 42West. "It can make it seem to people, 'Why aren't you concentrating on the tragedy and focusing on something like this?' "
Howard Bragman, a long-time PR professional and vice president of Reputation.com, said the company should have issued a strongly worded statement expressing shock and demanding an apology.
"It's not going to change anything in the minds of passengers or in the minds of the flying public," he said. "As offensive as what the TV station did was, and unacceptable, we're talking mountains and molehills here — people dying versus people getting offended."
Hard not to agree here. Rather that offer condolences to the victims, they're concerned about something like this? Sad part is that from my journalist's perspective, this suit has some merit on paper. Yes, they did check it--but you mean to tell me somebody didn't notice how those "names" sounded before it went to air? I'm not buying it. Still, given the timing and the circumstances, I have to agree with Bragman--while KTVU's actions were inexcusable, Asiana isn't doing itself any favors by going to court.
Asiana was also considering a suit against the NTSB as well, but decided against it. Ten to one it was because earlier in the day, the NTSB (as if it had a choice) gave the intern who confirmed the "names" his walking papers.