BBC DJ fired after royal baby tweet with chimpanzee picture
LONDON (AP): A BBC radio broadcaster was fired yesterday for using a picture of a chimpanzee in a tweet about the royal baby born to Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, and her husband, Prince Harry.
Danny Baker, who had a weekly show on BBC Radio 5 Live, tweeted yesterday that he had been fired after posting an image of a couple holding hands with a chimpanzee dressed in clothes and the caption: “Royal baby leaves hospital.”
The tweet came on Wednesday, the same day Harry and Meghan posed for photos with their first child, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor. The tweet was seen as a racist reference to baby Archie’s heritage. His grandmother, Doria Ragland, is African American.
Baker, 61, said that the posting had been meant as a gag, tweeting late Wednesday that it was “supposed to be (a) joke about royals vs circus animals in posh clothes but interpreted as about monkeys and race”. The post has since been deleted.
“Enormous mistake, for sure. Grotesque. Anyway, here’s to ya Archie, Sorry mate,” he tweeted.
BBC Radio 5 Live controller Jonathan Wall said in an email to staff that Baker had shown poor judgement.
“This was a serious error of judgement and goes against the values we as a station aim to embody. Danny’s a brilliant broadcaster but will no longer be presenting a weekly show with us,” Wall said.
On Thursday, Baker insisted that he is not racist and attacked the BBC for its handling of the controversy. He said the call to fire him “was a masterclass of pompous faux-gravity”.