It’s apparently not just ESPN’s SportsCenter Twitter account that has issues with identifying American athletes. Less than a week after @SportsCenter sent out a tweet with a story about U.S. swimmer Simone Manuel and accompanied it with a photo of Brazilian swimmer Etiene Medeiros, Essence magazine tweeted about U.S. gymnast Simone Biles (seen above) winning her fourth gold medal of the Rio Olympics, but paired the story with a photo of Manuel celebrating her earlier gold.
They’ve since deleted the tweet and sent out another one with the correct photo, but here’s a screencap of it:
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Also, it’s notable that the Manuel photo is with another recognizable athlete, Canadian swimmer Penny Oleksiak, and that the corresponding Biles photo would have been with Aly Raisman, also not exactly low-profile. Every outlet makes mistakes, as the SportsCenter tweet earlier shows, but this isn’t a good look for Essence.
Essence‘s Wikipedia entry describes the magazine as “a monthly magazine for African-American women between the ages of 18 and 49. The magazine covers fashion, lifestyle and beauty, with an intimate girlfriend-to-girlfriend tone, and their slogan “Fierce, Fun, and Fabulous” suggests the magazine’s goal of empowering African-American women.” Might we suggest that it could be more empowering to correctly identify the woman you’re talking about?
[Anika Reed on Twitter]
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