Fox News attempted to pay tribute
to icon Aretha Franklin, who passed away Thursday at age 76, but the network failed.
In a video tribute, viewers noticed that a graphic around the 3-minute 30-second mark had a glaring error, which anyone who understood and appreciated Black culture would have recognized.
The picture of Franklin alongside the text “1942-2018” is accurate. However, the picture in the upper right corner of a woman singing is actually Patti LaBelle.
Umm, is that Patti LaBelle in the corner pic.twitter.com/PmUPpgc0zb
— Philip Lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) August 16, 2018
Fox News issued a statement of apology:
“We sincerely apologize to Aretha Franklin’s family and friends. Our intention was to honor the icon using a secondary image of her performing with Patti LaBelle in the full screen graphic, but the image of Ms. Franklin was obscured in that process, which we deeply regret.”
However, the image in question was taken during LaBelle’s 2014
performance of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” for former President Barack Obama. Franklin was present at the event, but she did not perform with LaBelle.
Fox News is incorrect, again.
Twitter users, celebrities included, threw down the hammer at the network:
Fox News honored Aretha Franklin by using a graphic that contained a photo of Patti LaBelle. It’s probably hard for anyone who works at Fox News to tell black people apart because they’ve never worked with any.
— Chelsea Handler (@chelseahandler)
August 17, 2018
It’s 100% racist that Fox News used a picture of Patti Labelle instead of Aretha Franklin.
— Millennial Democrats (@Millennial_Dems)
August 17, 2018
.@fox REALLY You don’t know the difference between Aretha and Patti Shame on you!!! pic.twitter.com/6BxCT05gZj
— Stephanie Boudreaux (@s_sboo) August 16, 2018
If you watched Fox News today you learned that the United States defeated Communist Japan and Aretha Franklin is Patti LaBelle
— Sarah Cooper (@sarahcpr)
August 16, 2018
