Al Roker apologizes for 'insensitive' smile in flood tweet
NBC weather wonk Al Roker apologized Monday for covering the historic flooding in South Carolina by tweeting a selfie with his crew, all grinning beside a disabled car trapped in a washed-out road.
The tweeted picture, now deleted, showed Roker and his two-person camera crew, clad in rain gear, smiling widely as they prepared to "report on East Coast flooding from S. Carolina" for NBC's Nightly News.
Behind them, a small green-yellow car lay on its side in a shallow hole left by the collapse of the side of a road.
Roker later said the woman who was driving that car got out safely. But the explanation came too late; outraged tweets soon appeared:
Roker realized his mistake immediately, deleted the tweet and issuing apologetic new tweets.
What does this mean? Maybe nothing.
Veteran broadcasters like Roker know better than to smile on camera while reporting tragedies, such as a mass shooting for instance. But maybe they forget the rules, and good manners, when goofing off with silly selfies on social media.
Roker, by the way, has gotten into trouble with some of his tweets in the past. In 2014, he apologized for tweeting a "low-blow" slam at New York Mayor Bill de Blasio for not closing the schools before a major snow storm, forecasting he'd be a "one-term" mayor. It didn't help that he misspelled the mayor's name.
"I will say, the one tweet I do regret in the heat — I'm very passionate about the weather," he said later on Today. "I made a prediction that there would be only one term of his administration. I apologize for that. That was … a little below the line."