An American journalist and campaigner has taken to Twitter to complain after her image was misleadingly used with a story about the arrest of the wife of the Orlando nightclub shooter, Omar Mateen.
US news website RawStory erroneously used a photo of Noor Tagouri with their report on the arrest of Noor Salman, whose husband killed 49 people in a gay nightclub last June.
Tagouri, a reporter for Newsy, posted the following on her Twitter account yesterday:
Hi @RawStory, I am NOT Omar Mateen's wife. Plz acknowledge/correct the errors. PS: same photo you used before...lazy pic.twitter.com/2xtdcgNNgk
— Noor Tagouri (@NTagouri) January 16, 2017
.@RawStory also, the woman who was arrested doesn't even wear hijab....so there's that -_-
— Noor Tagouri (@NTagouri) January 17, 2017
Tagouri made headlines in September when she became the first hijab-wearing woman to appear in Playboy magazine.
Her original post has been liked and retweeted thousands of times overnight, with many offering words of solidarity to the 23-year-old.
@NTagouri @RawStory this to me has a libel and defamation of character lawsuit written all over it
— Darth Sidious (@AJFrancis410) January 16, 2017
@NTagouri @RawStory incredibly irresponsible, reckless, and dangerous. I am so sorry they did this to you:(
— Vanessa Veasley (@VanessaVeasley) January 17, 2017
@NTagouri @RawStory and that, ladies and gents, is bad journalism
— home (@wessamhazaymeh) January 16, 2017
Tagouri later tweeted that the website had so far failed to change the picture or issue an apology:
Still no word from @RawStory...pic still comes up in google cache version of story. Not ok. https://t.co/MzvH1xClkm pic.twitter.com/JWBI8IEfRF
— Noor Tagouri (@NTagouri) January 17, 2017
However, the website does now appear to have substituted the photo for one of Mateen himself, adding the following: “A previous version of this story erroneously featured a photo of activist Noor Tagouri. Raw Story deeply regrets the error.”
The mistake on this occasion is all the more poignant given that Tagouri has used her position to push for better representation of Muslim women in the media.
“I know what it’s like to have the narrative of our community be skewed and exploited in the media. I was like, ‘Hey, I know what it’s like to be misrepresented in the media. I won’t do that to you,’” the young activist said in her Playboy interview.
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