The Today Show‘s official Twitter account made a pretty tone-deaf mistake – when it posted a photo of Al Roker impersonating the singer The Weeknd – thinking it was The Weeknd.
The tweet was tweeted out by Nine’s breaky show to congratulate the singer on the success of his banger and hit Blinding Lights.
Pitchfork had reported earlier in the day that Blinding Lights had spent over 90 weeks on the singles charts, so naturally, The Today Show wanted to show its support, except it all went a bit wrong.
The tweet read: “The Weeknd’s ‘Blinding Lights’ has been named Top Billboard Hot 100 Song Of All Time.
“The hit single that dominated the top spot on the charts for four weeks also earned the most weeks as a top-five hit. (43 weeks), a top 10 hit (57 weeks) and a top 40 hit (86 weeks) #9today.”
Except the accompanying photo was of Al Roker – the American morning show host and not of the Grammy award-winning musician, The Weeknd. You know, who the tweet was about.
In fairness, to whoever tweeted the image out, Al Roker was dressed up like the Weeknd for Halloween. The Today Show also realised its mistake pretty quickly because the tweet has since been removed.
While assumedly it was an innocent mistake it’s important to acknowledge that mixing up black people is a wider issue and reeks of racism, perhaps unconscious racism, but racism all the same.
A spokesperson for Nine told B&T: “The tweet was taken down as soon as we realised an error had been made and in no way do we want this to diminish The Weeknd’s incredible feat.”
Of course, the error did not escape comedian Ryan Dunn.
When you buy The Weeknd from https://t.co/P8rRcKM27n https://t.co/atNrtwtwzv
— Ryan Jon Dunn (@RyanJon) November 24, 2021
