MSNBC host apologizes after network confused 2 black congressmen
Mary Rose Corkery, DCNF
MSNBC host Hallie Jackson apologized Wednesday after the network aired footage of the wrong black congressman when covering Democratic Florida Rep. Alcee Hastings’ death.
“We do want to apologize for a mistake that we made this show yesterday. We were reporting on the death of Congressman Alcee Hastings. We mistakenly showed video of Congressman Bennie Thompson, which should never have happened. We are sorry it did,” Jackson said on MSNBC’s “Hallie Jackson Reports.”
Hastings died at 84 years old on Tuesday after fighting pancreatic cancer since the beginning of 2019, Florida Politics reported. The Florida Democrat won his first term as a House representative in 1992 and holds the record for the longest-serving Florida congressman.
“Congressman Hastings served the state of Florida for nearly three decades in the House and deserves a tribute worthy of that service,” Jackson said.
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The footage of Democratic Mississippi Rep. Thompson aired on Tuesday’s episode of MSNBC’s “Hallie Jackson Reports.”
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The Senate voted in 1989 to convict Hastings when he was a district judge over participating in a bribery scheme to obtain $150,000 during a case, The Washington Post reported in 1989. The Senate had convicted the Florida congressman for multiple instances of perjury, for forging letters so he could be acquitted and the bribery plot.
