Accepting user-submitted content requires some levels of oversight, and faces plenty of perils if that oversight isn’t sufficient. The latest case in point of that came from Portland, Oregon NBC affiliate KGW, owned by Tegna. That station runs a regular “The Good Stuff” 7 p.m. local newscast, complete with viewer-submitted “Throwback Thursday” photos on Thursdays.
Most of the photos they ran this Thursday, which aired at different moments during the half-hour “The Good Stuff” broadcast in between actual good news stories, were fun personal lookbacks. But one, from “Schell VonQuiff” on Facebook, with the caption “boy scouts in the 50s,” featured a highly disturbing racist image. That image was of kids throwing balls or rocks towards a tent with holes and a “hit the n***** baby” sign. It can be seen at 0:21 of the clip below (viewer discretion strongly advised):
Portland, Oregon NBC affiliate KGW ran a viewer-submitted photo prominently featuring the n-word during the "Throwback Thursday" portion of their "The Good Stuff" good news segment. It can be seen at 0:21 below. They've since spent a lot of time apologizing. pic.twitter.com/w4MKXNFWrL
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) February 17, 2024
That led to the station profusely apologizing on each of their local newscasts Friday. Here’s one of those apologies, from the 11 p.m. news, which also featured comments from Pastor J.W. Matt Hennessee, a co-leader of the Portland chapter of the NAACP.
Here’s a key line from Hennessee’s response, which aired after the apology on each of the KGW newscasts:
“It’s really saddened us, number one, that a person decided that one of their best memories had to do with something that’s so disparaging to Black people, and using a word that has a really unfortunate kind of impact on our community. We have been traumatized in a number of ways and all this does is trigger that again.”
And here’s more from the station’s post about this on their website:
We deeply regret and apologize for the distress caused by the inadvertent airing of offensive content during Thursday evening’s broadcast of The Good Stuff program on KGW.
…Despite our rigorous policy of thoroughly screening all content for standards and accuracy before broadcast, we acknowledge our failure to uphold our own standards in this instance.
We understand the profound hurt this image inflicted upon our viewers and staff, particularly members of our Black community. To those who were exposed to the image and were hurt by it, we offer our sincerest apologies.
We have reevaluated our policies regarding the airing of user-submitted content from social media and taken internal steps to address the mistake. Additionally, KGW leadership has actively engaged with Black community leaders and government officials to acknowledge our failure and extend our apology for the harm caused.
As a company, we are dedicated to fostering inclusivity and compassion. While we acknowledge our failure on this occasion, we are committed to earning back the trust that has been compromised by the broadcast of this offensive photo. We recognize the importance of accountability and will work diligently to prevent such incidents from occurring in the future.
KGW certainly has taken significant action in the wake of this, including offering those apologies on each newscast and including Hennessee’s remarks with them. And their comment that they’ve “reevaluated our policies regarding the airing of user-submitted content from social media” should hopefully prevent anything like this from happening again; user-submitted content absolutely needs the kind of “rigorous policy of thoroughly screening all content for standards and accuracy” they claim to have, which they did not apply in this case. (By the way, the Facebook account this image seems to have come from has a whole lot of disturbing content, including using a racist mask from an old Corn Flakes’ box as a profile image. So this does appear to be an intentional troll job.)
This is far from the first time intaking content without proper screening has gone wrong. There have been lots of blunders there with hashtags in particular in the past, from TSN to the Cleveland Browns. But this is one of the worst examples that’s come up with user-submitted content. Any level of responsible oversight would seemingly have flagged this image as inappropriate, but it doesn’t look like KGW did that here. We’ll see if they do actually change course the way they say they will going forward.
[KGW]
