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Topic: Letters Sent to Romenesko
Date/Time: 2/8/2007 12:59:54 PM
Title: Subject: Do all black people look alike?
Posted By: Jim Romenesko
 
From DAVID MILLS: Ever notice how black people are often misidentified in newspaper and magazine photo captions? I mean famous black people. It’s a weird phenomenon.

In last month's James Brown tribute issue of Rolling Stone, there's a photo on page 48 with this caption: "Brown with Sharpton in 1974.” Alas, the man seated next to J.B. isn’t the Rev. Al Sharpton; it’s trombonist Fred Wesley. (Sharpton pointed this out to listeners of his syndicated radio talk show, saying "it ain't me," according to Richard Prince’s blog.)

Forget how widely exposed Rev. Al’s face is. Fred Wesley is one of the great musicians, arrangers and bandleaders in funk and soul music going back 35 years. The editors of Rolling Stone should know what he looks like.

Reuters last month moved a photo of the female stars of “Grey’s Anatomy” at the Golden Globe Awards. The caption identified the black woman standing in the middle, holding the trophy, as “writer Shonda Rhimes.” Wrong. It was actress Chandra Wilson. Reuters moved a correction.

On the reader feedback page at Reuters.com, someone asked: "Whoever thought Chandra Wilson looks like the creator of Grey's Anatomy Shonda Rhimes? For one, Shonda Rhimes the creator is taller and she wore black.”

"Several readers noticed this one,” the editor posted in response. “We corrected.” (“Several” noticed, huh? Chandra Wilson is only watched by, what, 24 million viewers a week?)

Such misidentification can occur within the body of a story. The AP moved the following correction on January 6: “In a Jan. 3 story about the death of former Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek, The Associated Press misidentified a singer who appeared in a concert in Jerusalem to mark Israel's 30th Independence Day. The singer was Leontyne Price, not Lena Horne.”

Sometimes it happens in the story and in the photo caption. Check out this double-whammy correction published in the New York Times on November 6, 2004:

“A review of the concert film ‘Fade to Black’ in Weekend yesterday misidentified a star appearing in the film with the rapper Jay-Z. She was Foxy Brown, not Lil' Kim. Because of an editing error, a picture caption misidentified the singer dressed all in white. He was R. Kelly, not Jay-Z.”

I have observed this phenomenon first-hand. In the late 1980s, as a feature writer for the Washington Times, I wrote a piece about a cable-TV movie, and I’d interviewed its star, Avery Brooks. Insight magazine reprinted the story, and ran a photo of co-star Samuel L. Jackson over the caption "Avery Brooks." Imagine my embarrassment.

I confronted an editor about this, and she kind of laughed it off. I don’t think Insight even bothered to run a correction. At that point, Sam Jackson wasn't the movie star he is today. But black folks in D.C. were seriously digging Avery Brooks as Hawk on “Spenser: For Hire.” So any black person who picked up that magazine and saw that error probably felt a little pinprick of insult. “Guess they think we all look alike.”

That’s what’s so amusing and/or annoying about this phenomenon. It links to that old racist trope of “they all look alike.” And I simply can’t imagine the media so frequently misidentifying white people of similar status (nor can I find evidence of it).

Here’s a correction the Washington Post published last year: “In some Nov. 8 editions, a photo caption with a Style article misidentified Massachusetts Gov.-elect Deval Patrick as Senate candidate Harold E. Ford Jr. of Tennessee.”

The Washington Times printed this one in 2005: “The Washington Times yesterday inadvertently published a photograph of D.C. City Administrator Robert C. Bobb misidentified as the late soul singer Marvin Gaye.”

Blogger Anil Dash called out this phenomenon in 2002, citing one AP photo caption that misidentified Chris Tucker as Chris Rock, and another that confused actor DeAngelo Wilson with soul singer D’Angelo.

“Could it just be coincidence? Yeah, I guess,” Dash wrote. “But it’s all over the place. Most photo corrections are spelling fixes, but then you get things like Scottie Pippen being misidentified. At the very least, it’s a sign of a remarkable lack of cultural literacy amongst this group of photojournalists.”

Well, I’m starting up a database. I want to get a sense of just how often this happens. So, please, anyone who comes across a well-known black person misidentified in a photo caption (or in the text of a news story), let me know via email. (If you see any well-known whites misidentified, I'd like to know that too.) [Permalink]

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