Follow Up: Columbus Anchor Now Says He's Sorry
/Yesterday, FTVLive posted a story in which WSYX (Columbus) Anchor Bob Kendrick called some of the people protesting the death of George Floyd, “Animals” in a post on social media.
Yesterday, FTVLive wrote:
“Bob Kendrick called the people that damaged the news cars “animals”, yet, I’m guessing that most black people that read that, feel he called African Americans animals as a whole. I can’t see inside Kendrick’s soul and I can’t tell you what his true feeling was, but I can say that when I read his post, I thought it was racist. I’m not saying Bob Kendrick is a racist, but I read the post as being racist.”
After FTVLive posted the story, Kendrick deleted the post, which had been up for over 8 hours. Then around midnight last night, he posted a video apologizing for his post.
An important message:
Posted by Bob Kendrick on Friday, May 29, 2020
We give him props for saying he’s sorry, but at the same time, we wonder if he knew he was wrong, why did the post sit on his page for hours?
Did he take it down because he felt he should, or because his bosses told him so after seeing the FTVLive story?
People make mistakes and people learn. I know, I do both every day.
We give credit to Kendrick for stepping up and saying his sorry. We really hope his apology was not just words.
This whole incident shows a couple of things. First, like we pointed out yesterday, as a News Anchor, your job is to report the story, not give your opinion on the story. A Journalist knows this and should stay in their lane.
Second, judging by the email I got after posting the story, Bob Kendrick has a lot of racist fans. Emails came into FTVLive using words much worse than what Kendrick said.
