Twitter Fumes as AP Reporter Refers to South African President as ‘One Unidentified Leader’

Ololade Adeyanju/

Associated Press (AP) White House reporter, Darlene Superville, has drawn the ire of Twitter users after failing to identify South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, among a group of four world leaders at the ongoing G-7 Summit in Biarritz, France, and instead referred to him as ‘one unidentified leader”.

Superville had tweeted a picture of the four, including France’s Emmanuel Macron, India’s Narendra Mordi, Canada’s Justin Trudeau and Ramaphosa, but identified only the first three in the caption.

Superville’s caption read: “World leader bear hug before the group photo @ #G7Summit in Biarritz, France. ⁦@EmmanuelMacron⁩ ⁦@narendramodi⁩ ⁦@JustinTrudeau⁩ and one unidentified leader.”

This had immediately attracted criticisms from Twitter users, especially South Africans, who accused her of disrespecting their president.

Others made a point of her being black, yet, found it convenient to disregard the only black president in the photograph.

Some others, including Nigerian writer, Molara Wood, chided the reporter for acting unprofessionally by failing to carry out necessary checks before captioning the picture.

Wood in her reaction wrote: “This Black journalist is White House reporter for @AP and does not know the President of South Africa, and failed to do the minimum required of her profession, which is to check.”

See few other reactions below:

0