Ramblings' Journal

Follow-up on CNN/Netscape Bush slur

The photo name that offended many on Netscape's News page has been corrected, according to a report this afternoon.

A photograph of President and Mrs. Bush featured in online election coverage by the AOL Time Warner companies uses a graphic slur in the coding of the picture.

A spokesman for CNN, Matt Furman, said the network had nothing to do with the slur.

"It was an image produced by an employee of another company," he told WND. "We didn't know anything about it and had nothing to do with it.

"Most importantly, it was never on CNN.com. … It's our picture, but it never appeared on our site."

The image did appear, however, on cnn.netscape.cnn.com, which is labeled as "Netscape network news with CNN."

A further statement from CNN reads: "A Web image and text disparaging President and Mrs. Bush currently circulating on the Internet was not created, disseminated or posted by CNN at any time, as is alleged. It was done by an employee of Netscape and posted on Netscape.com. CNN had no knowledge of it until it surfaced on other websites."

Andrew Weinstein, a spokesman for Netscape, reiterated the fact CNN itself had nothing to do with the slur. He says the Netscape employee responsible has been fired.

"A junior employee at Netscape identified two election photos with image tags that used inappropriate, disparaging terms," Weinstein told WorldNetDaily. "As soon as the situation was discovered, it was immediately corrected, and the employee has been terminated."

He said Netscape apologizes to CNN and "anyone else offended in this matter."