Updated Sunday, June 14, 2015, 4:35 p.m. EDT: After experiencing tremendous backlash for calling a suspect in a wild shootout at Dallas Police headquarters “courageous and brave,” CNN’s weekend anchor Fredricka Whitfield apologized Sunday. The veteran anchor said she misspoke Saturday while speaking with CNN legal analyst Philip Holloway about the suspect. “I misspoke, and in no way believe the gunman was courageous, nor brave,” she said.
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In an apparent gaffe while discussing a wild shootout at Dallas police headquarters that left a suspect dead, CNN anchor Fredricka Whitfield called his actions “courageous and brave.”
The weekend anchor of CNN Newsroom made the slip Saturday while speaking with CNN legal analyst Philip Holloway, saying, “It was very courageous and brave, if not crazy as well, to open fire on the police headquarters, and now you have this scene, this standoff,” she said, according to a transcript at Mediaite. “So you believe these are the hallmarks of more than one person’s involvement.”
They were discussing James Boulware, a lone gunman accused of shooting up Dallas police headquarters with an assault rifle in a rampage early Saturday that left him dead, according to USA Today.
Whitfield, who joined the network in 2002, was slammed on social media for the slip:
https://twitter.com/tvnewser/status/610078341236924417https://twitter.com/HomerWhite/status/610069040728379392
Neither the network nor Whitfield has commented on the incident so far, writes Mediaite.
Whitfield, who is based at the network’s Atlanta headquarters, has covered everything from wars in the Persian Gulf to the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, according to her biography. Before joining CNN, she was a correspondent for NBC News and served as an Atlanta-based correspondent for NBC Nightly News, the Today show and Dateline.