Chelsea Handler slammed Fox News for an Aretha Franklin tribute late Thursday night.
Franklin, who died at age 76 on Thursday morning, was honored by Bill Hemmer and Sandra Smith in a late morning tribute on “America’s Newsroom.”
“She sang with a smile on her face when she performed, and that is what she emitted for so many millions and for so many years,” Sandra Smith said as a graphic of Franklin, accompanied by a video of fellow soul singer Patti LaBelle flashed in the background.
Yep here’s video pic.twitter.com/IIkMDuKB7e
— Zachary Pleat (@zpleat) August 16, 2018
It didn’t take long for Chelsea Handler to catch wind of the misstep. The anti-Trump comedian shared her two cents with her millions of Twitter followers in a scathing tweet about race.
“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,” she wrote.
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
Fox News has since issued a statement to clarify the mistake, obtained by Variety.
“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.”
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