Tegna Racism?

When you are a veteran reporter covering a highly charged, racially tense murder trial involving a Black defendant, you have to be incredibly precise with your words.

WFAA (Dallas) Senior Crime and Justice Reporter Rebecca Lopez was not.

While reporting live on the high-profile Karmelo Anthony trial—where an 18-year-old Black defendant was sentenced to 35 years for a 2025 fatal stabbing—Lopez attempted to describe the tension surrounding the case.

Instead of using the common idiom "the elephant in the room," Lopez paused and uttered a deeply offensive, anti-Black racial trope.

"Let's talk a little bit about the big, uh, gorilla so to speak," Lopez said on air. "There were people out here on both sides shouting racial slurs at one another."

Intentional or a slip of the tongue, the fact remains: a Tegna reporter used a glaringly racist comment on live television. In a case already fraught with racial friction, substituting that specific animal into the phrase demonstrates a massive, unacceptable lack of judgment and awareness from a journalist who has been at the station since 1998. She simply should know better.

Viewers immediately took to social media to call out the veteran reporter's professionalism and decorum.

The station quickly went into damage control mode. In a statement to the Atlanta Black Star, the Tegna-owned station said:

"Yesterday while reporting on the track meet stabbing trial, our reporter used an idiom to describe dynamics in the courtroom that was inappropriate. We apologize for that error and are committed to ensuring this doesn't happen in the future. This mistake in no way reflects the culture of our newsroom or tenure of our coverage."

WFAA calls it an "inappropriate idiom," but viewers are calling it what it is.

You can watch the video of the live broadcast at this link and judge for yourself.