Category Archives: news

Julie Chen’s deeply personal story about getting plastic surgery to advance her news career is heartbreaking but inspiring

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NOTE: I have no idea why I saved this as a draft and never published it live, but here ’tis.

My friend Emil Guillermo has a solid piece about Chen’s surgery that chides Chen for selling out to “the man” and getting the surgery.

I know a lot of people think that way, but I’m not so sure it’s as easy as that, especially if you were in the news field almost two decades ago.

It’s easy for us to stand in judgement today, but imagine if you really had the most powerful agent in the industry agreeing with the dumbass news director from a small-market station, and telling you you need surgery if you want to climb the markets and get to New York as a network anchor.

I applaud Chen for going through such tribulations early in her career, and even more so for going public with it all today.

TV news FAIL: KTVU anchor reads fake names for Asiana pilots, has no clue what she’s saying

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(Note: KTVU attempted to use copyright law to remove this video clip even in instances, like mine, where the clip is essential to the discussion about it, for critical journalistic purposes. The station said it was removing the clips to protect the Asian community: “By now, most people have seen it. At this point, continuing to show the video is also insensitive and offensive, especially to the many in our Asian community who were offended. Consistent with our apology, we are carrying through on our responsibility to minimize the thoughtless repetition of the video by others.” It didn’t take long for the attempt to fail.)

See Updates at bottom

Seriously? San Francisco TV station KTVU aired a monster of a mess, when its anchor read the purported names of the pilots on Asiana flight 214 that crashed at San Francisco Airport. During the noon newscast, anchor Tori Campbell said the pilots were Captain Sum Ting Wong, Wi Tu Lo, Ho Lee Fuk and Bang Ding Ow. Really? Seriously?

Think about it — look at the names. Use one or two brain cells. And no, they’re not even close to being Korean names. Ugh, this is as bad as it gets. It’s not funny, and it’s a sad and unfortunate reflection of the state of the news industry.

This is a tragic FAIL on a couple of levels:

1. Who would submit such a nasty, racist “news release” to media? Do they think it’s funny?

2. How could a news organization — especially in San Francisco, which is not only where the crash occurred but a city with a very large and diverse Asian population — accept this kind of claptrap without either confirming it, or just plain LOOKING AT IT? (Here’s an AP story that ran, among hundreds of papers, in the SF Examiner from July 8 that lists two of the pilots’ names as released bu Asiana.)

3. What’s the chain of evidence that sees these names when they’re submitted? Producers? Directors? Reporters? Anchors (she obviously didn’t catch it)?
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Racist trolls come out from under their rocks following Asiana plane crash

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I shouldn’t be surprised or disappointed anymore, and accept the fact that there will always be idiotic people in the United States who probably function perfectly normally most of the time, and then turn into stupid racist haters the moment there’s some sort of tragedy in the world that involves people of color. Two years ago, I was dumbfounded that Americans would rant and rave about the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan and claim it was somehow “god’s revenge” for Pearl Harbor. What?

But the glibness and ease with which such racist drivel finds its way from pea-brained individuals to the social webs is still shocking. Here I’ve been following the crash of the Asiana jetliner at SFO (an airport I often fly to and from) as a human tragedy, but a miracle with only two casualties. I’ve felt empathy for the families of the two schoolgirls who were killed, and the many survivors who were injured. But the fact that most of those onboard survived — and that 123 survivors were able to walk away without being hospitalized — is nothing short of amazing.

But of course, the human stories of the crash don’t matter to the racists who immediately feel the need to respond with jokes about Asian stereotypes (we’re lousy drivers, har har) and hateful cracks about North Korea (hellooo, Seoul is in South Korea, and this was not an attack by Kim Jong Un on the US).

That such a lowbrow, juvenile mentality switches on so quickly shows that racism and prejudice are still alive and well just beneath the veneer of political correctness that the haters always complain about. Scratch the veneer just a bit with a news event like this tragedy, and you’ll see nothing but ugliness ooze out.

That’s why I write about these issues over and over.
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