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A St. Louis television station is under fire after an anchor “mischaracterized” minority homeowners using an “outdated, offensive and racist” term.
KMOV television station issued an apology for using the term on Feb. 26 while advancing a story about racial bias in home appraisals, according to reports.
“Tonight, homeowners of color are sounding the alarm when it comes to undervalued home assessments,” host Cory Stark, who is white, said on air.
JD Sosnoff, vice president and general manager of KMOV, and Stark attempted to do damage control over the apparent mistake as criticism grew over the embarrassing comment.
“It was in an original script as ‘colored owners’ and it was inadvertently changed and read on air by mistake,” Sosnoff said, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
The station regretted the mistake and quickly apologized to viewers in a pair of broadcasts last week, he added.
One of those apologies came from Stark.
“The word should never have come out of my mouth and does not reflect who I am or what First Alert 4 represents,” the newspaper reported.
The National Association of Black Journalists attacked the bugcalling it “outdated, offensive and racist,” while noting that St. Louis’ population is 43% black.
The organization said that while the station has apologized multiple times, it wants employees to retrain and wants KMOV to better recruit and retain Black staff.
“We look forward to these conversations with KMOV leadership,” NABJ President Ken Lemon and Vice President of Broadcasting Walter Smith Randolph said in a statement.
“However, this proves once again that the fight for equal treatment and fair coverage is not over. We hope that these discussions will be fruitful and produce documentable results.”
While St. Louis County NAACP President John Bowman condemned the incident, he does not believe there was any offensive intent behind it.
“Believe me, I have enough experience dealing with people who intentionally display discrimination or racist behavior,” Bowman said, according to the Post-Dispatch.
“But I’ve interacted with Cory Stark and at no point did I feel that way about him.”