NBC Apologizes for Confusing BTS and SHINee, Still Messes Up Featuring Jonghyun
December 20, 2017
On Tuesday, NBC Chicago attempted to report on the passing of SHINee’s Kim Jonghyun; unfortunately, they confused Jonghyun with BTS’ Kim Namjoon — better known by his stage name, RM (formerly Rap Monster).
Those mourning Jonghyun’s death were outraged, calling for an immediate apology from NBC Chicago, even trending #NBCChicagoApologize on twitter.
On Wednesday, NBC Chicago released an apology on Twitter.
Yesterday, while reporting on the death of Kim Jong-hyun, a member of the popular South Korean boy band SHINee, NBC 5 mistakenly aired video of the band BTS during our morning newscast. We sincerely apologize for this error. pic.twitter.com/b4ciVSLDlL
— NBC Chicago (@nbcchicago) December 20, 2017
“So yesterday, we told you about the death of a popular South Korean boy band singer — Kim Jonghyun died from an apparent suicide,” the voiceover began, the video featuring a clip of SHINee’s Tell Me What To Do. “We mistakenly reported that the band recently appeared on ‘The Ellen Show’; that was a different band, BTS. I apologize for that.”
The clip received numerous responses, the overwhelming majority rejecting the apology. Some pointed out that the video clip confusingly focused more on Jonghyun’s bandmate, Taemin, while others mentioned the ad carelessly left in the middle of the video. Ultimately, fans felt that the apology felt fake and didn’t address the real issue, which was that NBC not only mixed up SHINee and BTS, but mistook RM for Jonghyun — something they believed wouldn’t happen if the singer was non-Asian.
NBC Chicago also emailed a statement to NextShark:
“Thank you for reaching out. We sincerely apologize for this error and issued a correction on our newscast this morning as well as on our social media pages. We truly appreciate your feedback.”
Featured Image via Twitter / NBC Chicago
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