Fox Sports apologises for using footage of 9/11 memorial in baseball game promo
Fox Sports has apologised for using footage of a memorial to the 9/11 attacks in its promotional video for a baseball game on Saturday Night.
The Murdoch-run sports broadcaster said in a statement on Sunday that it had shown "poor judgement" in using the reflecting pools of the National September 11 Memorial in New York City as a backdrop for a jazzy graphic.
The promotion, which appeared during a match between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox on Saturday night, superimposed the teams’ logos onto the two reflecting pools in aerial footage of the landmark.
The September 11 memorial was opened in 2011 to commemorate the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center ten years earlier, which killed 2,977 people and launched the US and its allies into devastating wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Each reflecting pool marks the spot where one of the Trade Center’s twin towers stood, before both were struck by passenger jets hijacked by members of the Islamic fundamentalist group Al Qaeda and crumbled to the ground.
There are ideas that are merely bad, ideas that are downright terrible, and then there is what the Fox Sports graphic department came up with for Red Sox-Yankees, superimposing team logos on the site of the former Twin Towers: pic.twitter.com/o1Nvuxb4ao
— Andrew Mason (@MaseDenver) July 17, 2022
Here is video of @MLBONFOX and @FoxSports superimposing MLB logos over the 9/11 Memorial.
There have to be firings over this. Lots of them.
What. Goddamned. Fox. Assholes. pic.twitter.com/LnQEaVuMYJ— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) July 17, 2022
During last night’s telecast, we used poor judgment on the use of a graphic," a Fox Sports spokesperson told The Daily Beast. "We sincerely apologize and regret the decision."
The company’s right-wing sister station Fox News has been accused of exploiting the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks to spread fear about Muslims.
The Independent has asked Fox Sports for any additional comment.
Noooooo FOX did not do this. pic.twitter.com/cVE8MmIA9j
— Jack McGuire (@JackMacCFB) July 17, 2022
Journalists and baseball fans swiftly objected to the graphic on social media on Saturday night, calling it "horrible", "beyond offensive", and "egregious and tone-deaf".
"My goodness. That is incomprehensible," said New York baseball commentator Howie Rose. "Offensive doesn’t even begin to describe it."
Former Fox Sports anchor Keith Olbermann said: "F*** you, Fox Sports. It was always shameful to work for you but this eclipses everything else."
One Twitter user simply asked: "Fox, WYD" – meaning "what are you doing?”