NBC's lead Olympic sports caster Mike Too Faced Swift criticism after a mixup during the men's basketball medal ceremony at the Olympics during the broadcast too mistakenly identified the flag draped over French basketball player Matias lorts shoulders as the Palestinian flag Lort who hails from the French overseas territory of martinque was actually displaying the flag of his native land which shares some visual similarities with the Palestinian flag as France stood on the podium with their silver medals alongside the bronze winning Serbian team and the gold medalists from the US Taro commented you saw with Lort one of the back centers the Palestine flag draped over his shoulders we are certainly conscious of any displays regarding the Middle East conflict from athletes involved in these games viewers quickly noticed the mistake and took to social media to express their surprise and frustration one user tweeted no way Mike too said the martinque flag french colony was the Palestine flag while another added Mike too that's not the flag of Palestine that's the flag of martinque which is to France like Puerto Rico is to us many were also puzzled that the error wasn't corrected during the remaining broadcast time later too addressed the mistake on social media tweeting just acknowledging as soon as possible my error for misidentifying the martinque flag as the flag of Palestine during the metal ceremony at Men's Basketball today they are similar but obviously distinctly different which is quite important for all involved he followed up with a formal apology at the start of NBC's Saturday Prime Time Olympic coverage stating before we get going an acknowledgement of an error that I made earlier today in misidentifying the martinque flag as the flag of Palestine during the men's basketball metal ceremony they are similar but obviously distinctly different which is quite important for all involved and I apologize for that error Tio's Swift acknowledgement and apology reflected the importance of accuracy in live broadcasting particularly when it comes to representing National symbols and sensitive Geo political issues