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UPDATED, 1:50 PM EST, 2-17-15: San Diego’s Fox News 5 (KSWB-TV) apologized to viewers two nights after briefly portraying President Barack Obama as a sex-assault suspect on its 10 PM news on Friday. Citing a statement read late-Sunday by Fox 5 anchor Misha DiBono, the Times of San Diego reports:

“And we have an apology now. Friday night at 10 o’clock, we inadvertently used a photo of President Obama while reporting on a story about charges being dropped in a local case. We regret the error.”

Earlier Sunday, in response to requests for comment, a top spokesman for the station’s corporate parent acknowledged that Fox 5 San Diego “made a very unfortunate mistake during Friday evening’s newscast.”

Earlier:

Everyone makes mistakes, but San Diego’s Fox 5 (KSWB-TV) made a doozy when on Friday it aired a picture of President Barack Obama instead of a suspected rapist.

The New York Daily News reports:

The image, which included a caption that read “no charges,” appeared on a screen behind anchor Kathleen Bade for about five seconds. Bade’s report discussed how the office of San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis’ has declined to prosecute a person of interest in a rape case, the Raw Story blog reported. The sexual assault case involved students at San Diego State University.

The broadcast, which ran for an hour, did not follow up with a correction.

But station officials noticed the slip-up right away, Fox 5 San Diego assignment editor Mike Wille told the Times of San Diego.

“Yeah, there was an accident when they had an over-the-shoulder [view during the broadcast]” Wille said. “It wasn’t on purpose.”

He said of the decision not to run a correction: “They really don’t do that when it’s a small thing like that.”

The station, a subsidiary of Chicago-based Tribune Broadcasting, is identified on the company’s website as operating in the 28th-largest media market in the country, the News notes.

Do you think it’s “a small thing?” Let us know what you think in the comments section.

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