M.I.A and Anderson Cooper engaged in a war of words over the war film Sri Lanka's Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished.
The documentary film examines the final days of the 2009 civil war in Sri Lanka. M.I.A, a Sri Lankan native, called out Cooper for an article Anderson linked to in 2009 that had false information about her.
"@AndersonCooper called me a terrorist for speaking out, and expressed support for the SLgov when this was happening," the rapper tweeted. She later added: "YOU CALLED ME A LADY TAMIL TIGER when I talked about Tamil civilians dying."
Cooper, evidently, had no idea what M.I.A., who recently caused a stir by flipping the bird during the Super Bowl halftime show performance, was talking about. "@miauniverse, you are mistaken. I never called you a terrorist. I don't even know who you are other than the lady who sang at superbowl," he wrote. "By the way, I defended your finger pointing at the superbowl, so check your facts. I've no idea what youre tweeting about."
NBC apologizes for M.I.A.'s "spontaneous" middle finger gesture during Super Bowl halftime show
Anderson eventually deduced that M.I.A had taken issue with an article that was linked to from Cooper's blog — not something he'd actually written. "M.I.A. you've gone from saying 'I wrote,' 'I called you,' to saying my CNN show blog had a link to an article. Big difference," Cooper wrote. "M.I.A. we link to many articles with different viewpoints, and we gave you an opportunity to respond."
The pair eventually cleared the air. "@miauniverse I can understand your frustration if someone wrote untrue things about you, and I'm glad you were able to respond," Cooper wrote, which M.I.A. retweeted. "And the brutal war in SL has not gotten enough coverage in the US, and I know that very upsetting."
The singer followed up with, "@andersoncooper im glad u understand but please watch #killingfields because this is what i was trying to say."
