March 29, 2024

News Anchor Apologizes for Using a Racial Slur for Martin Luther King Jr.’s Surname

“Dr. King was murdered,” she said in a phone interview. “He was assassinated fighting for equality. It’s a joke in some communities with that term, and it’s just not acceptable.”

Sergeant Taylor said that using the slur in place of Dr. King’s name was “not something that is normally a slip of the tongue.” She believes that Mr. Steincross should be fired.

The incident attracted attention from people across the country on social media. Nadine Graham, a New York-based music writer, called it strange and disheartening.

“You can’t control what somebody has going on in their mind or maybe their everyday lingo,” she said in a phone interview. “But on TV, you should be a little more careful.”

Earlier this month, Jeremy Kappell, then a meteorologist for WHEC Channel 10 in Rochester, N.Y., was fired after uttering the slur while describing a city park named for Dr. King. During an evening broadcast, Mr. Kappell said the slur and then corrected himself, repeating Dr. King’s last name accurately.

A WHEC employee saw a post about the slur on social media and alerted the station. As the clip shot around online, the mayor and City Council called for “real consequences for the news personality involved and also for the management team that failed to immediately apologize.”

The station’s vice president and general manager, Richard A. Reingold, announced that Mr. Kappell had been fired after a two-day internal investigation.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/18/us/mlk-kevin-steincross-slur.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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