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Topics: News
Joe Harker
The Today show has been widely mocked after showing the wrong flags in their coverage of the death of Shinzo Abe.
The former Japanese prime minister was shot twice while delivering a speech in the city of Nara and was rushed to hospital.
Doctors spent four and a half hours trying to save his life but no vital signs were detected by the time he arrived and it was later announced that Abe had died.
A 41-year-old man, Tetsuya Yamagami, was detained at the scene and has been named as Abe's suspected killer.
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Tackled to the ground mere moments after he allegedly shot the former prime minister with what appeared to be a homemade firearm, police say they do not currently believe the man was politically motivated in his suspected killing.
Abe's death attracted worldwide news coverage as tributes to his time in office poured in from all across the globe.
However, in the US the Today show made a major gaffe in their report on the death of the former Japanese prime minister by showing the wrong flags in their coverage.
Per the Independent, the Today show has been widely mocked for their report on Abe's death containing footage of South Korean flags rather than Japanese.
While the flags share some similarities, namely a white background with a brightly coloured circle in the middle, they have plenty of distinguishing features which should mean someone can easily tell them apart.
The Japanese flag has a plain red circle in the centre meant to represent the sun, a plain and simple design that should be easy to recognise and hard to mix up.
Meanwhile, the Korean flag has a red and blue circle which represents the sky and the land surrounded by four sets of trigrams, which are black lines that come in threes.
The Today show has come in for plenty of mockery for their elementary mistake, with one person commenting 'please teach more geography in American schools'.
Another said 'ummmm, wrong country' and suggested the Today show has 'some issues with keeping the countries in Asia straight'.
Someone else remarked that the Today show was 'going to blame a summer intern for this' massive foul-up and sympathised with the unfortunate scapegoat if blame ever did fall on somebody.
Others wanted to know just how the massive error had happened, since it ought to be as simple as googling pictures of the Japanese flag to add into the package.
Instead it seems as though somebody may have either not looked too hard at what they were adding into the coverage or been confidently wrong about what the Japanese flag looks like.
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