The woman shown above wasn't mourning the South Korea ferry, but the Mount Everest avalanche. Her image was used in a Fox News report on the ferry sinking though. (Credit: Fox News via KoreAm)

Fox News admitted to mixing up a video clip of a woman reacting to the Mount Everest avalanche in its reporting on the South Korea ferry sinking, the Washington Post‘s Erik Wemple reported earlier this month.

Because of the error, a woman’s emotional response to the avalanche that killed 16 sherpas was inserted into a video news segment on the ferry.

“They used footage of random sad Asians instead of going to Korea,” the Korean Cultural Center in Los Angeles’s Rick Phillips said, according to Wemple.

Fox News admitted it erred, but Wemple suggested it was an “innocent” error because the ferry accident and the avalanche occurred within two days of each other. The avalanche was April 18. The ferry sank April 16.

“The wrong video was mistakenly pulled from the international feed. We regret this error and have corrected the footage online and will address it on air, as well,” David Clark, Fox News’s executive producer for weekend news and programming told Wemple.

As evidence of the mix-up, Wemple pointed to an April 19 Associated Press image of what appears to be the same woman, who was the mother of one of the sherpas killed.

The blog KoreAM also reported on the video error.

iMediaEthics has written to the Korean Cultural Center for further comment.

Hat Tip: Washington Post and @TimesMistaken