WEAU 13 Nerws in Eau Claire apologized Thursday for airing a graphic depicting a Republican elephant logo with Ku Klux Klan hoods hidden in the space between the elephant’s legs during a newscast this week.
The graphic, which aired during WEAU’s 10:00 pm newscast Monday night, was featured in a story on the Republican Governor’s Association making a multimillion dollar ad buy in Wisconsin aimed at boosting socialist candidate Francesca Hong ahead of Tuesday’s primary election.
Hong narrowly lost the election to Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley.
The Republican KKK logo is relatively well known in online leftist circles and is used to present the GOP as racist. The Ku Klux Klan was in fact a militant arm of the Democratic Party and committed acts of violence and intimidation against Republican voters. Democrats used the KKK extensively to prevent newly freed slaves from voting Republican and breaking Democratic electoral dominance across the South during Reconstruction.
In a statement read on Thursday night’s 6:00 pm news broadcast, the station calimed the graphic was aired by mistake.
“At WEAU, earning your trust means being transparent when we make a mistake,” an anchor read. “We recently used what we believed was a generic Republican Party elephant graphic. We later learned the image also contained hidden Ku Klux Klan imagery. We did not realize that when it aired. That’s when we immediately removed it from our system.
“We are committed to fair and unbiased journalism. When we get something wrong, we will acknowledge it, correct it and tell you what happened. We sincerely apologize to the Republican Party and to you, our viewers.”
WEAU did not explain how the graphic ended up in its system in the first place or identify which employee added it.
