Oregon TV station KGW issues an apology after showing a racist image during broadcast

An Oregon TV station issues an apology after a Thursday segment in their broadcast showed a racist image from the 1950s. 

The station KGW asks its viewers to share Throwback Thursday, photos on the company, social media platforms, the statement said. Throwback Thursday refers to when social media users post old pictures of themselves or other people from ranging from a few years ago to decades.  

An image that was chosen by the station that appeared during the segment on Feb. 15 showed children throwing balls at a sign that had a racial slur. 

“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,” KGW said in a statement Friday. “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.”

In the statement KGW also said it has reevaluated its policies when airing submitted content from social media and taking additional steps to prevent this issue from happening in the future. 

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Community leaders react to the image shown on KGW

"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,” Pastor J.W. Matt Hennessee said in an interview on Friday with KGW. “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.” 

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler met with the leaders of the NAACP to discuss the photo. 

"This morning I met with Portland Chapter NAACP leaders, James Posey and Pastor Hennessee, to discuss the deeply disturbing graphic shared by KGW news,” Wheeler said in a statement. “Together, we are calling on KGW to immediately address this issue and ensure changes are made to prevent anything like this from happening in the future."