- Media wrongly used photos of actor Randall Park in stories about Ali Wong divorce.
- Parade Magazine and MSN were among the outlets that blundered.
When Ali Wong announced she divorces her husband Justin Hakuta Earlier this week, some media outlets mistakenly used photos of Asian-American actor Randall Park to share the news.
The errors sparked outrage on social media and renewed the #WrongAsian trending Twitter topic, with users decrying another case of a member of a minority group being misidentified in the media.
Sharing a screenshot of a now-deleted tweet by Parade Magazine, which featured a photo of Wong and Park, blogger and author Phil Yu tweeted Wednesday: “Come on! Can’t we spoil the news of Ali Wong’s divorce with Wrong Asian racism?”
— Phil Yu (@angryasianman) April 12, 2022
Later he underline how MSN made a similar mistake with a tweet containing a photo of Park. Neither Wong nor Hakuta are pictured next to a title on their divorce.
— Phil Yu (@angryasianman) April 13, 2022
In addition to expressing their anger over the gaffes, some users mocked the outlets by sharing Wong’s divorce headline with photos of other stars, including everyone from John Krasinski to Scarlett Johansson.
“In their defense, Justin [Hakuta] and Randall Park were both Asian on the same night this time around,” a doctor said. tweeted jokingly, alongside two photos of the three at the same event. The photos were taken on the red carpet for the premiere of the 2019 romantic comedy “Always Be My Maybe,” which starred Wong and Park.
—Esther C, MD (@choo_ek) April 12, 2022
Wednesday, Parade Magazine offered his “sincere apologies” by Twitter.
“We understand how hurtful this photo error was and the impact it may have, and we sincerely regret it. We would like to apologize to Ali Wong, Justin Hakuta, Randall Park and anyone else who may have be hurt by our mistake. We will implement stronger measures in the future to ensure this does not happen again,” the magazine tweeted.
—ParadeMagazine (@ParadeMagazine) April 13, 2022
MSN did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
Wong and Hakuta met in 2010 and got married in 2014. They have two children together.
Previously, the #WrongAsian Twitter topic highlighted other cases of misidentified Asians.
—Fonda Lee (@FondaJLee) September 17, 2021
—Dino-Ray Ramos (@DinoRay) February 4, 2020
