During WHEC-TV‘s Friday evening broadcast, Jeremy Kappell said “Martin Luther Coon Park,” when referring to a downtown Rochester park named after slain civil rights movement leader Martin Luther King Jr. Kappell said “King” immediately after using the slur and continued with the broadcast.
Does anyone really think he’d deliberately go on air saying the word ‘coon’ in combination with Martin Luther King’s name?
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It was an accident caused by him speaking too quickly, he told the public on a Facebook post.
Social media went wild attacking him and the mayor rushed to a decision, demanding he be fired, WITHOUT EVEN SPEAKING WITH HIM.
MR. KAPPELL ISSUES AN APOLOGY, EXPLAINS THE SITUATION, ASKS PEOPLE NOT TO RUSH TO JUDGMENT
Mr. Kappell thanked supporters who believe him and said the Mayor rushed to judgment. It has been “very hard on me and my family,” he said. He said, “there was no malice” and he “had no idea how it came across to some people.”
“What happened on Friday, to me, it’s a simple misunderstanding. If you watch me regularly you know that I tend to contain a lot of information in my weathercast, which forces me to speak fast and unfortunately I spoke a little too fast when I was referencing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”
“So fast to the point where I jumbled a couple of words. In my mind, I knew I mispronounced, but there was no malice. I had no idea the way it came across to many people,” he said in a video posted to Facebook Monday night.
MAYOR RUSHES TO JUDGMENT
Not only did the mayor rush to judgment, he didn’t bother to call the meteorologist, and he called for his dismissal.
Clips of Kappell using the racial slur made the rounds on social media over the weekend. That ledt o Rochester Mayor Lovely A. Warren and the city council to release a statement Sunday.
“It is wrong, hurtful and infuriating that WHEC Channel 10 broadcast a racial slur in reference to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during its Friday News broadcast,” the statement read. “It is beyond unacceptable that this occurred. There must be real consequences for the news personality involved and also for the management team that failed to immediately apologize and address the slur.”
The mayor and city council called for Kappell’s termination and for an examination of WHEC’s response to the incident.
This is an example of what the loons did in the social media sewer:
For the record, I’ve never uttered those words in my life. https://t.co/UgkLMmboXY
— Jeremy Kappell (@JeremyKappell) January 7, 2019
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