As heartbroken as we are over Monday’s bombings in Boston, we can’t deny the unease we feel as pundits take to the airwaves to prematurely speculate about the perpetrators behind the heinous acts. Yesterday afternoon, CNN jumped the gun and began reporting that “dark-skinned individual” with “brown skin” had been arrested and was behind the act. Later in the afternoon, they modified the description to a “brown-skinned individual,” before eventually retracting the news.
As you can imagine, brown and dark skinned Twitter users had a field day discussing CNN’s grave error. Below are the 12 best tweets we found about the mixup. And while you’re at it, check out Rafat Ali’s new Tumblr, Brown Skinned Individual, created minutes after CNN’s report, and Stephen Colbert’s coverage of the rush to suspect a “dark-skinned male.”
Bombing Suspect: CNN confirms suspect is a "Brown skinned Male," CBS confirms "White skinned Male," we can confirm he has skin.
— Global Grind News (@GlobalGrindNews) April 17, 2013
.@Boston_Police, can we confirm? RT @intelwire: My sources are telling me the bomber definitely has skin.
— Hayes Brown (@HayesBrown) April 17, 2013
PANDARUS : Faith, to say truth, brown and not brown.
CRESSIDA : To say the truth, true and not true.
(cc. @CNN)
— Teju Cole (@tejucole) April 18, 2013
https://twitter.com/soniafaleiro/status/324721913450594305
https://twitter.com/robfee/status/324597084751798272
CNN: Its a dark skinned guy. CBS: Its a white guy. So at this point the suspect is Michael Jackson. Great job, guys.
— Not Bill Walton (@NotBillWalton) April 17, 2013
https://twitter.com/SuburbanComa/status/324596551295053824
Disturbing that it's OK for TV to ID a Boston bombing suspect only as "a dark-skinned individual."
— gwen ifill (@gwenifill) April 17, 2013
Dear MSM please give me a suspect so I can engage in meritless conjecture and blame a collective group for an individual's criminal act.
— Wajahat Ali (@WajahatAli) April 17, 2013
https://twitter.com/daddy_san/status/324604184240467968
https://twitter.com/ArifCRafiq/status/324585888208273409
“The suspect has to be dark skinned. No white person knows how to use a pressure cooker.” ~ CNN
— Narinder Singh (@NarinderSingh) April 17, 2013
3 thoughts on “The 12 Best Tweets About CNN’s ‘Brown-Skinned Individual’ Fail”
Comments are closed.