The UK’s BBC News has been forced to issue a embarrassing apology after mistakenly using a photo of actress Viola Davis alongside a headline about Beyoncé’s historic Grammy Awards’ success after she became the award night’s most successful recipient in history.
Reporting on Beyoncé’s achievements, instead of running an image of the 41-year-old singer, the broadcaster instead ran an image of 57-year-old Davis taken at the Golden Globes in early January alongside the superimposed caption “Beyonce’s big night”.
Who’s gonna tell @BBCNews 🤔🫤☹️ @RecordingAcad #Grammys pic.twitter.com/kdir14pij9
— Dr Tru Powell (@Tru_Powell) February 6, 2023
Naturally, BBC viewers were none to thrilled by the mix-up.
“Who’s gonna tell @BBCNews?” asked one to Twitter.
Another added: “I’m guessing it’s a mistake but with all their resources BBC have zero excuse for this.”
Another said: “I actually think this is just a case where they ran the major headline across the televised coverage, basically the tagline isn’t changing regardless of who is on the screen throughout the segment.”
BBC News took to Twitter on Monday to apologise for the error, adding it “fell below” its usual standards.
The statement read: “We apologise for the mistake last night when our news channels briefly showed a photograph of Viola Davis from January’s Golden Globes alongside a headline about Beyoncé at yesterday’s Grammys. This fell below the BBC’s usual standards.”
In BBC’s defence, Davis was in attendance at the Grammys, picking up a gong for the audio recording of her autobiography Finding Me in the best spoken word category to her haul of four Emmys, an Oscar and three Tonys.
Meanwhile, Beyoncé surpassed Hungarian-British conductor Georg Solti’s 31 Grammy’s to become the most awarded artist of all time when she picked up her 32nd Grammy Award on Sunday night.
