A St. Louis television station is under fire after an anchor “mistakenly” described minority homeowners using an “outdated, offensive and racist” term.
Television station KMOV issued an apology for using the term on Feb. 26 while previewing a story about racial bias on home appraisals, according to reports.
“Tonight, colored homeowners are sounding the alarm when it comes to undervalued home appraisals,” anchor Cory Stark, who is white, said on air.
JD Sosnoff, KMOV vice president and general manager, and Stark tried to do damage control over the apparent slip-up as criticism grew over the cringe remark.
“It was in an original script as ‘homeowners of color’ and was inadvertently changed and mistakenly read on air,” Sosnoff said, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
The station regretted the error and quickly apologized to viewers in a pair of broadcasts last week, he added.
One of those apologies came from Stark.
“The word should have never come out of my mouth, and it does not reflect who I am or what First Alert 4 represents,” the newspaper reported him saying.
The National Association of Black Journalists assailed the error, calling the term “outdated, offensive and racist,” while noting St. Louis’ population is 43% black.
The organization said while there have been multiple apologies by the station, it wants employees retrained and wants KMOV to better recruit and retain black staffers.
“We look forward to these discussions with KMOV’s management,” NABJ president Ken Lemon and vice president-broadcast Walter Smith Randolph said in a statement.
“However, this further shows the fight for equal treatment and fair coverage is not over. We hope these discussions will be fruitful and yield documentable results.”
While St. Louis County NAACP president John Bowman condemned the incident, he doesn’t think there was offensive intent behind it.
“Trust me, I’ve had enough experience dealing with people who intentionally show discrimination or racist behavior,” Bowman said, per the Post-Dispatch.
“But I’ve interacted with Cory Stark, and at no time have I ever felt that about him.”
