Kobe Bryant Death: BBC Apologises For Mistaken LeBron James For Legendary Star In TV News Footage

The BBC has apologised after footage of LeBron James was mistakenly included in its coverage of the death of his fellow basketball star Kobe Bryant.

Footage of James beating Bryant’s career points tally appeared in the BBC’s News At Ten programme on Sunday. But the voiceover did not explain why viewers were seeing James on screen at that stage, rather than Bryant.

Viewers pointed out the error online, criticising the BBC for confusing the two prominent black basketball stars.Bryant, a five-time NBA champion, spent his entire 20 year career playing for the Los Angeles Lakers, before he retired in 2016. The footage included in the programme featured James, who also played for the LA Lakers, surpassing Bryant to become the NBA’s third-highest scorer of all time.
James scored 29 points to reach 33,655 career points, 12 more than Bryant. Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter Gianna, were killed alongside seven others, when his private helicopter crashed in southern California on Sunday morning.

At the end of the bulletin, newsreader Reeta Chakrabarti apologised for the earlier on-screen error saying: “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 apologise for the error,” she added. Within 15 minutes, Paul Royall, editor of BBC News at Six and Ten, posted an apology on Twitter, saying the programme “mistakenly used pictures of LeBron James in one section of the report”.
He added: “We apologise for this human error which fell below our usual standards on the programme.” Many viewers took to Twitter to condemn the error.Photo Credit: Getty

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