A mix-up during Saturday night’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner put the wrong journalist in the spotlight during a moment intended to honor another.
According to multiple attendees and social media posts, a camera on the event’s internal feed mistakenly cut to NBC News White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor instead of Black Press USA’s Washington Bureau Chief April Ryan, during remarks by White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) President Eugene Daniels.
The mistake occurred around 10:10 p.m. Eastern as Daniels praised Ryan while awarding the Dunnigan-Payne Prize for Lifetime Achievement to former WHCA President Bob Ellison. In a moment captured on the internal feed, Daniels appeared to shake his head and mouth, “That’s not her,” when the camera landed on Alcindor rather than Ryan.
Adding to the awkwardness, Alcindor was seen on the feed mouthing, “I’m not April Ryan,” seemingly aware of the mix-up. Meanwhile, the public broadcast feeds on C-SPAN and MSNBC correctly showed Ryan at her table during the segment.
The incident was first reported by Ruthless Podcast co-host ComfortablySmug and Puck News co-founder Julia Ioffe, who both posted about the mistake on X. Ioffe later confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation that the error happened on the event’s internal feed.
The WHCA has not yet issued a statement or responded to requests for comment regarding the mix-up.
While the broadcast mistake was brief and confined to the in-house audience, it raised eyebrows at an event that places heavy emphasis on journalistic recognition, inclusion, and accuracy. Both Ryan and Alcindor are high-profile black journalists with longstanding careers in political reporting, and the moment sparked online chatter.
The White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), which organizes the annual dinner and includes many members of the legacy press corps, has long been viewed as overwhelmingly liberal—both in terms of its membership and the tone of its coverage. That ideological tilt has drawn criticism from conservatives who argue the association often functions more like an insider club than a neutral journalistic body. In that context, the mistake of confusing two prominent black female journalists is especially embarrassing for the WHCA.
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