CNN Used The Wrong Picture For A Story About Philadelphia, And People Had Lots Of Jokes

It’s been a stressful couple days/weeks/months/years, and as everyone awaits the final official tally from the 2020 presidential election — and however many weird fits incumbent Donald J. Trump chooses to throw in response — it’s healthy to get briefly distracted by jokes. So here’s a good one: at some point on Wednesday, before Michigan had been formally called for Biden, CNN threw up a picture of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the source of a good chunk of the nation’s as-yet-uncounted absentee ballots. But the picture definitely wasn’t Philly.

Instead of using, say, an image of Independence Hall or the Liberty Bell or the Pat’s and Geno’s area or the Rocky statue perched below the Philadelphia Museum of Art, CNN went with what appears to be the Catalina Islands. It looks suspiciously like one of those screen savers or laptop wallpapers that show a generic coastal paradise; in fact, one person speculated that’s what it is — a mistake that wound up on-air.

But it definitely had screensaver energy.

People were quick to call out the gaffe.

Some made Rocky jokes.

Others made more specific Philadelphia jokes.

Anyway, Philadelphia has had it rough the last week and change, from the police killing of Walter Wallace, the protests and subsequent police violence that resulted, and, now, becoming the center of election vote counts. We hope this weird blip lightens things up a bit.