Washington Post Journalist Breanna Muir Calls Out Her Own Colleague for Misidentifying Her as Breonna Taylor: ‘I Feel Horrified and Humiliated’
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Breanna Muir, a video technician at The Washington Post, has called out her own colleague for misidentifying her as Breonna Taylor.
Muir, who is not on Twitter, took to LinkedIn to blast Micah Gelman, the director of video and a senior editor at The Washington Post, for the gaffe, emphasizing that her name is “NOT Breonna Taylor, the Black woman who was murdered in 2020.”
“I feel horrified and humiliated,” she said in the post. “It has been difficult for me to explain to my Black parents that the Director of Video is referring to me as Breonna Taylor in public.”
Muir went on to share that Gelman’s misidentification of Muir “was the first time that I witnessed my Black mother and Black father cry.”
Gelman made the shocking error in a Twitter thread thanking his team for “working tirelessly to cover the war in Ukraine.”
A thread of thanks for everyone @PostVideo working tirelessly to cover the war in Ukraine. @whitneyshefte has been in Kyiv for 6 weeks spending most nights in a bomb shelter with her colleagues. @wleaming is doing the same in the very dangerous Kharkiv near the Russian border.
— Micah Gelman (@mbgelman) February 27, 2022
He went on to give his team members personal shoutouts for their work covering the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, yet accidentally called Muir “Breonna Taylor” when thanking those who worked on the Post’s live shows.
Still flabbergasted at how the Post’s director of video called a member of his own team “Breanna Taylor” instead of her actual name — Breanna Muir — in this thread of acknowledgments last night. Breanna is an incredibly talented journalist and friend. She deserves an apology. pic.twitter.com/RgNILmxjuE
— Felicia Sonmez (@feliciasonmez) February 28, 2022
Gelman later deleted that particular post in his thread, which was screenshot by Washington Post reporter Felicia Sonmez, and went on to apologize to Muir, explaining that those at the Post have been working “extremely long hours.”
In a long thread last night thanking my staff for working exhaustive hours, I inadvertently misidentified Breanna Muir. I reached out to her to apologize and do so here now. We are all working extremely long hours and while this was not intentional, it should not have happened.
— Micah Gelman (@mbgelman) February 28, 2022
“In a long thread last night thanking my staff for working exhaustive hours, I inadvertently misidentified Breanna Muir,” he wrote. “I reached out to her to apologize and do so here now. We are all working extremely long hours and while this was not intentional, it should not have happened.”
While Gelman apologized, Muir emphasized the need to “stand up for” herself in her LinkedIn post, adding, “Although, Breonna and I share the same ethnicity, we are two different people.”
“Please stop misidentifying people of color in the workplace. It is not okay and I’m not okay. I pray that these type of ‘mix-ups’ never happen to anyone,” she added, calling out Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos in the hashtags and adding “#blacklivesmatter #racism.”
