News Anchor Apologizes for Using Slur for Martin Luther King Jr.'s Surname

Kevin Steincross, a veteran morning anchor on Fox2 St. Louis, was discussing an upcoming tribute to the civil rights leader when he pronounced King’s last name as an anti-black slur during the 5 a.m. broadcast.

Hours later, during the 9 a.m. show, Steincross said the station had heard from a viewer that he had mispronounced the name.

“Please know I have total respect for Dr. King, what he meant and continues to mean to our country,” Steincross said. “This was not intentional in any way, and I sincerely apologize.”

Tribune Broadcasting, the station’s parent company, said that Steincross would not face disciplinary action. Steincross started at Fox2 as a general assignment reporter in 1996 and became a morning newscaster in 1998, according to the station’s website.

“The Fox2 management team spoke to Kevin following the mistake, and we believe that it was truly inadvertent and does not reflect Kevin’s core beliefs,” the company said in a statement. “Kevin is extremely upset by the mistake and regrets it deeply. We do not believe additional disciplinary measures are necessary.”

But some people said the apology was not enough. The St. Louis chapter of the NAACP said on Twitter that it was “unacceptable and very disappointing” and called for Steincross to resign. Others on Twitter questioned how he could mix up the insult with King’s name.

During his lifetime, King’s last name was often swapped out for the epithet, both by avowed racists and others who claimed to have used it mistakenly. More recently, U.S. broadcast journalists have made similar utterances in 2005, 2010 and 2014, the Democrat and Chronicle of Rochester, New York, reported.

Heather Taylor, a sergeant in the St. Louis police force and president of the Ethical Society of Police, an association for African-American police officers in St. Louis, said the slur was so insulting because of the long history of its use against a man of towering stature.

“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.”

Taylor said that using the slur in place of King’s name was “not something that is normally a slip of the tongue.” She believes that 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, was fired after uttering the slur while describing a city park named for King. During an evening broadcast, Kappell said the slur and then corrected himself, repeating 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 Reingold, announced that Kappell had been fired after a two-day internal investigation.

“These words have no place on News10NBC’s air, and the fact that we broadcast them disheartens and disgusts me; that it was not caught immediately is inexcusable,” Reingold said in a statement. “I regret that we did not immediately interrupt our broadcast and apologize on the spot.”

Kappell released a video after his firing, saying he had jumbled his words and apologizing to anyone who felt hurt. He also discussed the matter in an interview with CNN’s Don Lemon, who told him, “I don’t understand why you were fired.”

Bernice King, the civil rights leader’s daughter, weighed in on the firing during an interview with TMZ. She said Kappell should have been reassigned or sent to bias training but not fired.

Taylor said she hoped the uproar would become “a teachable moment” for people to understand what King sacrificed.

“He deserves all the dignity that comes with his name,” she said. “He doesn’t deserve that term.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.