Mexican news channel airs video of testicles during total solar eclipse coverage

Videos of the eclipse shifted to a man’s testicles

While covering the Total Solar Eclipse across the Americas for it’s midday broadcast yesterday, RCG Media’s newsroom was rendered to a stunned silence the moment one of the viewer submitted videos of the eclipse shifted to a man’s testicles obscuring a light source instead. It happened when the male anchor was listing down cities that the eclipse could be seen from. The montage that followed as he spoke about ‘the municipalities where the view could be appreciated from the most’, shifted to a video of a man’s testicles moving across the screen to block a light.

The video was immediately cut off upon seconds of recognising the blunder, but the initial reaction could be gauged by the gasps of the two female anchors that were sitting beside him. The male anchor, quick to respond, explained that the previous video was submitted by a fan and that he was grateful to those reporting the video but the situation quickly devolved as it took social media by storm. The station’s loyal viewers, however, did not seem to take offense to it.

Although some were critical of the vetoing process that allowed such a clip for broadcast, most of the subsequent social media response was in the form of gagposts, memes, jokes and satirical tweets on the pressing concern of source and content verification in media. The serious questions followed the same tone, asking how such a clip could get past what should be a rigorous verification process. Some questioned if the time constraints levied on breaking exlusive content is what may have led to this.

But mostly, social media users called it the egglipse and questioned the presence of hair on the sun. One particularly memorable social media user, @Rhevolver on X, posted a thread that seemed to indicate that he was the one who had submitted the clip to RCG Media. He ridiculed the media team for not reviewing the submitted video by tweeting:

‘Good afternoon, @rcg_media. I appreciate that you took my video about the eclipse but I would have loved to be credited. Greetings.’ 

Though this tweet implies that this user himself may be responsible for this clip, according to local media the same video clip has been resurfacing constantly since 2017. It cannot be said with accuracy that the video footage was of Rhevolver himself. However, such clips being posted during solar events are not uncommon, going as far as to be deemed an inside joke among the Latin American viewers. According to the Mirror, Motley Crue’s drummer Tommy Lee had posted a similar video on his instagram page before taking it down.

Regardless, this seems to be the first time such an incident has been broadcasted on air in a television channel. Meanwhile, RCG Media has held it’s silence on the issue. 

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