Before pressing play, stare at the staring screen below. Now read the names out loud.
Congratulations, you have done more due diligence than at least three people at KTVU.
For this to have aired someone would have had to call to National Transportation Safety Board to get the names and make sure they had the correct spelling. Then inside either an editing bay or live in the control room someone had to type the names in for the video still. Finally the News Anchor would read it live on the air.
Thanks to these three failures National Transportation Safety Board intern Mike Hunt has pulled off one of the most public pranks in recent memory.
It is easy to imagine a bored intern sitting by the phone all day waiting for the final weeks of his unpaid parade of shit work to end. Since the crash of Asian 214 the phone had been ringing almost non-stop with every news organization around the world wanting information. Unfortunately there was none to give. But there is a ringing phone to answer and one lucky intern to field all those calls: Mike Hunt.
Prior to the crash his days were spent making copies and answering phone calls. Nothing close to the excitement he had hoped. Now that something had actually happened, here Mike was stuck behind a desk answering a constantly ringing phone.
The orders passed down to him were laid out to him in black and white on a memo in front of him:
MEDIA: "We have no information at this time. Please attend our pressing briefing at 4:30 pm EST."
FAMILY: Connect to Communications.
AVIATION PERSONNEL: Connect to Managing Director.
ALL OTHERS: Take a message.
Roughly four hours later Mike must have said the first sentence over 200 times. Most of the media outlets were understanding. Others were incredulous. A few were hostile - stating that he was lying.
After weeks of days that seemed to drag on the NTSB office was a buzz of activity. A hive of excitement that Mike was missing as he diligently answered phone call after phone call. After four hours the drone was getting to him.
Then an Associate Producer from KTVU in Oakland called. His voice sounded so much like a buddy of Mike's at school. The two of them had a habit of calling each other from random numbers trying to prank each other. In that moment Mike ignored the script and decided to have some fun.
Why yes, Mike relayed to the newsman, we do have information on the flight. Asiana has released the names of the flight crew. After hours of hearing frustrated tones from everyone else he spoke with it was an incredible relief to hear some genuine excitement on the other end.
Mike told this unfortunate third in command the most ridiculous names he could come up with. They were names that if this was his buddy on the other line, he would have asked if one of the stewardesses was Wei Tu Soon.
Instead this clueless member of the Third Estate asked Mike to spell them. Slowly.
And he did. Twice.
Before Mike knew it the guy from Oakland was gone in a hurried thank you and he was staring at the dead receiver in his hand. The phone rang for the 402 time that day and for the 401 time that day Mike read the first sentence on the memo.
Congratulations, you have done more due diligence than at least three people at KTVU.
For this to have aired someone would have had to call to National Transportation Safety Board to get the names and make sure they had the correct spelling. Then inside either an editing bay or live in the control room someone had to type the names in for the video still. Finally the News Anchor would read it live on the air.
Thanks to these three failures National Transportation Safety Board intern Mike Hunt has pulled off one of the most public pranks in recent memory.
It is easy to imagine a bored intern sitting by the phone all day waiting for the final weeks of his unpaid parade of shit work to end. Since the crash of Asian 214 the phone had been ringing almost non-stop with every news organization around the world wanting information. Unfortunately there was none to give. But there is a ringing phone to answer and one lucky intern to field all those calls: Mike Hunt.
Prior to the crash his days were spent making copies and answering phone calls. Nothing close to the excitement he had hoped. Now that something had actually happened, here Mike was stuck behind a desk answering a constantly ringing phone.
The orders passed down to him were laid out to him in black and white on a memo in front of him:
MEDIA: "We have no information at this time. Please attend our pressing briefing at 4:30 pm EST."
FAMILY: Connect to Communications.
AVIATION PERSONNEL: Connect to Managing Director.
ALL OTHERS: Take a message.
Roughly four hours later Mike must have said the first sentence over 200 times. Most of the media outlets were understanding. Others were incredulous. A few were hostile - stating that he was lying.
After weeks of days that seemed to drag on the NTSB office was a buzz of activity. A hive of excitement that Mike was missing as he diligently answered phone call after phone call. After four hours the drone was getting to him.
Then an Associate Producer from KTVU in Oakland called. His voice sounded so much like a buddy of Mike's at school. The two of them had a habit of calling each other from random numbers trying to prank each other. In that moment Mike ignored the script and decided to have some fun.
Why yes, Mike relayed to the newsman, we do have information on the flight. Asiana has released the names of the flight crew. After hours of hearing frustrated tones from everyone else he spoke with it was an incredible relief to hear some genuine excitement on the other end.
Mike told this unfortunate third in command the most ridiculous names he could come up with. They were names that if this was his buddy on the other line, he would have asked if one of the stewardesses was Wei Tu Soon.
Instead this clueless member of the Third Estate asked Mike to spell them. Slowly.
And he did. Twice.
Before Mike knew it the guy from Oakland was gone in a hurried thank you and he was staring at the dead receiver in his hand. The phone rang for the 402 time that day and for the 401 time that day Mike read the first sentence on the memo.
No comments:
Post a Comment