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Journalism of Courage
After NBA legend Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash Sunday, a report by the BBC on the star basketball player’s death’s has been criticised for using footage of another basketball player. During the News at 10 show, footage of LA Lakers star LeBron James was shown instead of Bryant, and the media outlet later apologised for the “human error”.
Matthew Champion, deputy world news editor for BuzzFeed News in London, first pointed out the error and the clip shared by him quickly went viral.
The clip received over 4 million views and took social media by storm. Online, many termed the gaffe “ignorant” and “disrespectful”, and pointed out that it was hurtful to mourning fans.
https://twitter.com/GirlyNomad/status/1221678697767370752
On-air, an anchor later apologised for the error.
“In our coverage of the death of Kobe Bryant, in one section of the report, we mistakenly showed pictures of another basketball player, LeBron James … we do apologize for the error,” said anchor Reeta Chakrabarti.
Paul Royall, editor for BBC News at 10 apologised on Twitter as well. “In tonight’s coverage of the death of Kobe Bryant on #BBCNewsTen we mistakenly used pictures of LeBron James in one section of the report. We apologise for this human error which fell below our usual standards on the programme,” he wrote.
Bryant and eight others, including his teenage daughter Gianna, died in the crash. Bryant, a five-time NBA champion, spent his entire 20 year career playing for the Los Angeles Lakers, before he retired in 2016.
