It’s technically baseball season, but New York City is straight-up hyped about the Knicks, folks. As they should be — this is the farthest the Knickerbockers have gotten in the NBA playoffs since the 2012-13 season. New York reached the Eastern Conference Semis that year before losing to the Indiana Pacers.
So, you know everyone was getting amped up for Game 1 of this year’s East Semis against the Miami Heat. New York went into halftime with a 55-50 lead before eventually losing the matchup by a score of 108-101. If you watched the halftime show on ABC and were paying close attention, though, you saw something that made your jaw drop. And probably not in a good way.
It was a shot of the Statue of Liberty, but with the Twin Towers in the distance:
Pay attention at the end. How old is this footage ABC is using?! Wtf is goin on here?! pic.twitter.com/254YhBzE1R
— Khaled Abdallah (@khaled74) April 30, 2023
WOOF, man.
As has been established across different places of the internet since this was pointed out, TV stations consistently use old stock footage that could easily be outdated. But still, it’s been almost 25 years since the tragedy of 9/11. We can’t get an updated shot of the Statue of Liberty? Really?
I mean, it’s not like the Knicks haven’t been in the playoffs since then. And they’ve definitely played enough primetime games on the ESPN family of networks to warrant a quick little refresh.
This was a simple mistake that is legitimately every editor’s nightmare. The folks at Awful Announcing covered this situation and received the following communication from ESPN about that old stock footage:
In an email, Ben Cafardo, Senior Director, Communications at ESPN, shared ESPN’s statement: “We mistakenly used an old stock image and we apologize.”
Let’s just hope that footage finds the trash well before Game 2 gets underway on Tuesday night. If it hasn’t already been tossed, that is.
You can reach Matt Musico at matt.musico@xlmedia.com. You can follow him on Twitter: @mmusico8.
