UK broadcaster apologizes for misquoting Boris Johnson as saying ‘people of colour’

Britain’s Channel 4 apologized Friday after mistakenly reporting that Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he wants to control the numbers of “people of colour” coming to the UK.

Speaking at a campaign rally, Johnson said: “I’m in favour of having people of talent come to this country but I think we should have it democratically controlled.”

However, subtitles on a video of the speech posted to Channel 4’s official Twitter account read “people of colour” instead of “people of talent.”

The broadcaster subsequently deleted the tweet and apologized.

“Boris Johnson says ‘people of talent’ not ‘people of colour.’ Our earlier tweet was a mistake. We misheard and we apologise,” the news channel said on Twitter.

However, the storm sparked by the original tweet was enough to push “people of colour” into the UK’s top Twitter trends on Friday.