The death of Kobe Bryant was followed by several blunders from media outlets on Sunday. The BBC committed one such error, mistaking Kobe Bryant with another NBA superstar.

According to The Washington Post, BBC's News at Ten report showed clips of LeBron James while talking about Bryant and his daughter Gianna, who died in a helicopter crash northwest of Los Angeles on Sunday morning.

Several social media users slammed the news station, considering it a case of being racially insensitive. MP David Lammy said, "if the BBC hired more black producers and editors, appalling mistakes like this simply would not happen."

Another social media user said, "this is pure racism."

Twitter users also responded to people who came to defend the BBC.

"People saying the BBC & UK MEDIA do not know Kobe Bryant because UK doesn't know basketball are excusing RACIST micro-aggressions," one social media user said. "Kobe Bryant is 1 of the most famous sportsmen in the world & was in the Olympics. They JUST can NOT be bothered as he's BLACK. We'll NOT move on! SMH."

BBC news editor Paul Royall apologized for the blunder, calling it a "human error."

"In tonight’s coverage of the death of Kobe Bryant on we mistakenly used pictures of LeBron James in one section of the report," Royall wrote. "We apologise for this human error which fell below our usual standards on the programme."

But several people still didn't accept the apology.

"The fact you let it go on air when the man's name is on his shirt lays bare your shoddy standards, ingrained racism, or both," one social media user said. "Everyone in the chain of command for that piece should be sacked. There is no excuse for it."

Another person responded to the apology by saying "this was intentional."

"Humans also check things before they go out, especially when talking about the biggest basketball player of his generation," a Twitter user said. "This was intentional and you at the BBC need to sort out this mess. Not all Black people are the same. There's no way this could have happened mistakenly."

Several others on social media said the error is a sign of BBC's declining standards.

"There's been a real smell of decay and decline around @BBCNews for some time and it's just honking now," one Twitter user said. "This is just so incredibly insulting and unforgivably sloppy."

Another person said "BBC employs a lot of incompetent people, standards have really declined over the last few years. The news channel, gets loads of things wrong." 

One Twitter user said this kind of error is "possible in a society where POC are structurally, discriminated against, made invisible, cut out of pictures, underrepresented, misrepresented, bullied and shamed in the media, the list goes on."

MSNBC reporter Alison Morris was also under fire Sunday when she seemingly said "n****rs" while reporting the news on Bryant as Blavity previously reported. 

"Seems like he was just the kind of athlete, the kind of star that was perfectly cast on the Los Angeles N****rs…Lakers," Morris seemingly says in the news clip posted to Twitter.

The reporter later went to Twitter to apologize for the incident.

"Earlier today, while reporting on the tragic news of Kobe Bryant’s passing, I unfortunately stuttered on air, combining the names of the Knicks and the Lakers to say 'Nakers,'" she wrote. "Please know I did not & would NEVER use a racist term. I apologize for the confusion this caused."

In another controversial incident involving a reporter, Washington Post journalist Felicia Sonmez was suspended from the newspaper after she posted a 2016 article about Bryant's rape case just hours after his death, the Daily Mail reported.

"National political reporter Felicia Sonmez was placed on administrative leave while The Post reviews whether tweets about the death of Kobe Bryant violated The Post newsroom's social media policy," Tracy Grant, managing editor of The Washington Post, told Daily Mail. "The tweets displayed poor judgment that undermined the work of her colleagues."

BBC-News-At-TenKobe-bryantLeBron-James