Video of kids hijacking TV interview prompts social media debate

LONDON: Unless you have been asleep for the last four days, you must have seen it: The hilarious, and now very viral, clip of a BBC interview interrupted by two young kids.
The interview, with political scientist professor Robert Kelly, was conducted via Skype — and shows his two young children, one on a rolling walker, casually hijack the live broadcast.
Speaking to the BBC, Kelly was being quizzed over his reaction to the ousting of South Korean President Park Geun-hye. But before he can give his considered thoughts, one of his children sneaks into his office, and then another. They are followed by an exasperated-looking woman who rushes in to retrieve them, sliding across the floor and then making a heroic lunge to finally close the study door.
The video, which lasted less than a minute, has been viewed many millions of times online — causing laughter, but also some heated debate.
Many people assumed that the panicked Asian woman who bursts into the room during the video was a nanny. She is in fact Kelly’s wife, Jung-a-Kim.
Numerous official news outlets also jumped to the wrong conclusion about this, including Time.com, which issued a clarification on the story.
The debate on the issue prompted articles such as one carried by the BBC, titled “Why did people assume an Asian woman in BBC viral video was the nanny?”
The viral video “sparked a wider discussion about assumptions about race, gender, and mixed-race couples,” the article said.
Jen McGuire, writing on Romper.com, said that the assumption — made by many on social media and mainstream news outlets — marked “a dangerous stereotype.”
“Are we really still, in 2017, openly stereotyping? Seeing an Asian woman in a white man’s house with kids and telling ourselves: ‘Yep, that’s the nanny. Now, let’s send out a bunch of tweets to call her the nanny like it’s a fact,’” she wrote.
Author Roxane Gay, author of “Bad Feminist” and “Difficult Women,” tweeted: “Today one of the funniest, most charming videos showed me that we have way more work to do than I ever thought.”
Responding to another Twitter user who argued: “I think it is a fair assumption. She looks way younger than the dude and looks like a different ethnicity than her children,” Gay replied: “It’s only a fair assumption if you’re racist.”