FROM STAFF REPORTS
After being contacted by representatives with the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, KETK television station, the NBC affiliate in Tyler, on Thursday, Oct. 28, agreed to remove from its website an eight-minute segment, which the station broadcast on Wednesday, Oct. 27, on the number of LGBT people President Barack Obama has appointed in his administration.
The segment ended with the program host asking viewers, “Will the acceptance of homosexuality be the downfall of this country?”
GLAAD representatives said the Tyler TV station has also agreed to have openly gay Fort Worth City Councilman Joel Burns appear on its newscasts on Friday, Oct. 29.
According to a statement from GLAAD, Burns will appear on KETK newscasts Friday “to discuss why potentially harmful questions like Maier’s should not be asked — and certainly not broadcast over public airwaves — in the first place.”
The segment and the question to listeners apparently originated, however with radio host Garth Meier on KTBB 92.1 FM, which shares content with KETK, and Meier has yet to respond to the media watchdog group, GLAAD officials said.
Later on Thursday, though, KTBB 92.1 FM President Paul L. Gleise did issue an apology, saying, in part, that the question was “unfortunate in its wording and unfortunate in the perception that it created among a large number of thoughtful individuals. The question … is poorly worded at best and inappropriate altogether at worst. For that, we apologize.”
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This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition October 29, 2010