CNBC Graphic Replaces Andrew Yang with Wrong Asian Man Then Confuses Gillibrand with Gabbard
The lack of media gatekeepers, we’re constantly told, has been a disaster for an informed populace.
All of a sudden, we have YouTube creators, social media figures and new media websites popping up, all of which didn’t ask the big three networks or the established print media for permission to exist.
What an unmitigated conflagration, particularly in the age of “fake news” and “alternative information networks.”
Thank goodness we have our benevolent media overlords to tell it like it is — overlords like NBC and its various cable subsidiaries.
One of them is CNBC, where the standards are no doubt high.
You don’t get to be a network which prominently features a show hosted by a hyper-caffeinated investment buffoon hitting oversized buttons that play juvenile sound effects he uses to dispense portfolio advice to callers without the same rigorous standards that brought you “The Huntley-Brinkley Report.”
So clearly, far be it for me to smear CNBC and reduce America’s trust in the brave men and women (and no doubt some non-binary individuals) who work in our media to presume they made a mistake when they put up a photo of another guy with the surname Yang in place of Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang.
Also, I’m not one to slag CNBC for doing the same thing to Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, another candidate for the Democratic nomination.
The network meant to replace her picture with that of New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand — clearly to confuse the Russians, who I’ve been told have an especial fondness for Gabbard.
So here’s how CNBC covered the fourth-quarter fundraising totals on Monday’s edition of “Squawk Box”:
This actually just happened. This is not fake. Click the link to confirm for yourself. CNBC screwed up the photos for both @AndrewYang and @TulsiGabbard in their reporting of Q4 fundraising totals.
Source: https://t.co/a5zUItpS0H#YangMediaBlackout #YangGang #TulsiGabbard pic.twitter.com/b91mvSmvCH
— Scott Santens? (@scottsantens) January 6, 2020
First off, that’s not Andrew Yang, an entrepreneur who’s become so ubiquitous — either via commercials in selected markets or a multitude of internet clips and memes — that it almost makes you wonder whether CNBC outsourced its video production to someone who hasn’t actually heard of this whole presidential election doohickey but plans on doing their civic duty and voting in 2021.
Scott Santens wasn’t the only one to tweet this out. Ben Mitchell of CBS News also noticed it:
Can confirm this is not @AndrewYang. Nor is @TulsiGabbard the same person as @SenGillibrand https://t.co/lKHEn0tAEb
— Ben Mitchell (@bfmitchell) January 6, 2020
It turns out the picture was of Geoff Yang, the founding partner of venture capital firm Redpoint Ventures. He confirmed that he wasn’t entering the race nor had he taken in a relatively substantial fourth-quarter haul:
Ummm. This is @geoff_yang and I am NOT running for President. https://t.co/p5VYi85eN8
— Geoff Yang (@geoff_yang) January 6, 2020
By the by, Yang and Gabbard are two of the only serious minority candidates left in the race. (Gabbard is Samoan-American.)
Isn’t it slightly racist to replace Yang with a different Asian person (I can just see the video editor digging his grave deeper during the HR interview: “I mean, they looked the same to me!”) and whitewashing Gabbard with a white person who’d managed to have far less success in the primary field than Gabbard despite far higher expectations?
By the way, as The Hill pointed out, Yang had boycotted CNBC’s sister station, MSNBC, because of what he perceived as unfair coverage of his campaign.
He decided to lift that boycott last month, but apparently the NBC network of stations hasn’t become too acquainted with him yet.
Gabbard, meanwhile, has lashed out at a whole host of media organs — NBC not among them — for what she says were “smears.”
“Just two days ago, The New York Times put out an article saying that I’m a Russian asset and an Assad apologist and all these different smears. This morning, a CNN commentator said on national television that I’m an asset of Russia. Completely despicable,” Gabbard said during the October Democratic presidential debate.
This time, Yang actually seemed pretty cool about CNBC’s gaffe:
— Andrew Yang? (@AndrewYang) January 6, 2020
Yang can probably be happy, given that he had a massive fundraising haul in the fourth quarter. Gabbard, meanwhile, just retweeted the photo of the gaffe without comment.
Again, if this weren’t legacy media, this would be pilloried without end for the supposedly racist undertones.
Remember that time that Jenna Bush Hager and Michael Keaton misidentified the two films at the Golden Globes with mostly black casts — “Fences” and “Hidden Figures” — as “Hidden Fences?”
Here’s one headline from Refinery29: “The Hidden Truth Behind ‘Hidden Fences’ & White Privilege In Hollywood.”
It doesn’t even have to be the Golden Globes; if this were Fox News, we’d see the same kind of outcry.
But CNBC is legacy media, and we know what happens when you attack that.
Why anger the gatekeepers who do such a good job of keeping us free from “fake news” like, say, people who would have us believe that two Democratic candidates aren’t who they say they are?
I sleep a lot more comfortably at night knowing that these folks are keeping me informed.
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