Los Angeles Station KTLA Apologizes for N-Word Tweet, Blames ‘Technical Error’

Chris Yarzab via Wikimedia Commons

One of the country’s most-watched local TV stations apologized on social media Friday after its X account posted and deleted a racial slur.

The verified KTLA account was posting its usual blend of local and national news Friday when one post shocked followers.

Screenshots of the post went viral after the account posted the N-word.

The station did not specifically state which word used, in a post sent later in the day said the team was “appalled” by the incident.

KTLA twice posted an explanation – once in a standalone X post and another in a reply to a story that was shared about the Coachella music festival.

Both posts read, “KTLA experienced a technical error while adding language filters to our social media accounts, resulting in an offensive word being accidentally shared. We are appalled and apologize that this occurred.”

Screenshots of the since-deleted post appear to show KTLA shared the N-word in a single-word post.

WARNING: Images may contain explicit language, viewer discretion is advised.

KTLA’s initial apology quickly racked up more than 5,000 comments and thousands of other impressions.

A large number of those who replied to the apology were skeptical that the station tweeted the slur by accident.

According to the entertainment industry outlet TheWrap, KTLA’s explanation for how the word was shared online holds – that they were trying to ban the word via a filter but inadvertently tweeted it instead.

“X gives its users the ability to mute certain words on its platform — effectively blocking them from seeing any tweets that include said words,” the outlet reported. “KTLA’s apology tweet suggests that it accidentally tweeted out the N-word when whoever was running its social media account at the time intended to instead add it to the profile’s list of filtered words.”