Fox News aired a lengthy tribute to Aretha Franklin this Thursday. But one of the stills showed a photo of Patti LaBelle singing instead of Franklin.
As HuffPost explained, the still, which comes at about 3:24 in the video, shows Franklin and text with her name and the dates of her life span. Transposed on the image is a photo of a black woman singing that one would expect to be Franklin. But it’s Patti LaBelle singing Over The Rainbow for then-President Barack Obama. It's a bit hard to see but LaBelle is in the screen grab above, centered over the "ARETHA FRANKLIN" text.
Fox later apologized, claiming, “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.”
But that's hardly reassuring to fans of The Queen Of Soul. As HuffPost pointed out, the image of LaBelle used in the Franklin tribute video is one of LaBelle performing by herself.
Watch a portion of the Fox tribute above, from the August 16, 2018 America’s Newsroom. Underneath is the video of LaBelle’s 2014 Over The Rainbow performance for Obama.
Crossposted at News Hounds.
