1
2
3
4
A Belgian newspaper called "De Morgen" published a picture of the president of United States, Barack Obama, and his wife Michelle Obama, which showed them as apes, along with another picture that says "First Black President of the USA, Starts Selling Weed".
This was actually a part of the newspaper's satirical section which is called "The Daily Herald" which is on the Saturday editions of the newspaper. The satirical section of the newspaper's weekly edition was completely devoted to Barack Obama and was called "The Obama Herald" for the week. The page, along with the pictures, also contained fake tweets by President Obama and some articles.
The images were published as if they were sent by the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, followed by the text:
Vladimir Putin is the president of Russia. He sent us this attachment at our request, and chose to send pictures instead of text 'because he doesn't have a lot of time'.
The pictures were targeted to Barack Obama's planned visit to Russia which is to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the start of the first World War.
The pictures posted by the Belgian newspaper 'De Morgen' with the text stated above.
After being labelled as racist, De Morgen then apologized for the pictures that were published. The newspaper only apologized for the "tasteless joke". On the page 2 of it's newspaper of this months 24th, the it was written that:
When you consider the fragment apart from its context, which is a properly worked out satirical section, then you don't see the joke but just a picture evoking sheer racism. That was a risk we didn't consider enough beforehand.They also added that:
We wrongly assumed that racism is no longer tolerated anywhere, and that as a result it could be the subject of a joke.
De Morgen then apologized to everyone who may have felt insulted by the pictures:
In this case, we plead guilty of bad taste. We continue to be on the side of those that are battling any form of racism. Don't hesitate to contact us if we would go too far on a different occasion.
Muhammad Junaid
Muhammad Junaid is the writer of Entertainment Ghost. He writes articles, reviews, previews and entertainment news about gaming, technology, the media and so on. You can follow him on Twitter @Mr_MJunaid and Facebook MJunaid
