On Tuesday, Fox and Friends First host Heather Childers accidentally referred to the UConn Huskies Men's Basketball Team as the "NAACP champions" following their victory over the University of Kentucky. While Childers quickly corrected herself, there was still a host of backlash for this slip of the tongue.
However, Childers was hardly the first to mix up "NCAA" and "NAACP." CNN's Wolf Blitzer did the same thing in 2010 referring to Pres. Obama's bracket selections, and MSNBC's Ronan Farrow did the reverse on Thursday, calling the NAACP the NCAA. Following these revelations, Washington Post blogger Erik Wemple issued an apology on Friday to Childers and the Fox News Channel, noting that his original column was overly harsh.
In this space, we’ve been known to criticize Fox News. On Tuesday, for instance, when we participated in something of a pile-on vis-a-vis Fox’s Heather Childers. On the early-morning show “Fox & Friends First,” she confused the NCAA with the NAACP in delivering the news that the University of Connecticut’s men’s basketball team had won the national collegiate championship. “Stupid” mistake, we determined.
Well, not that stupid. As the post didn’t note, other media folks have made the same goof. We judged too harshly, and our apologies go to Childers and to Fox News.