NECN apologizes for its airing of insensitive term
Regional news network NECN issued an apology for a racially insensitive graphic that it broadcast during a Wednesday afternoon segment on the rate at which minorities are subject to stops, searches and frisks by Boston police.
The graphic included the term “colored people” twice.
NBCUniversal-owned NECN claimed the wording “accidentally” appeared in the graphic. It was changed for subsequent broadcasts to “people of color,” to conform with The Associated Press report on which the story was based.
“The language that accidently (sic) appeared in a graphic during Wednesday afternoon’s NECN broadcast was highly inappropriate, and we regret the error,” Newton-based NECN said in an emailed statement.
“As soon as our producers became aware of the error, it was immediately removed and then corrected on air. We sincerely apologize to our viewers.”
AP reported April 26 that the rate at which minorities are subject to stops, searches and frisks by Hub police doesn’t appear to have improved in the year since the department said it was narrowing racial disparities in its tactics.
At least 71 percent of street-level, police-civilian encounters from 2015 through early 2016 involved persons of color, while white people accounted for about 22 percent, according to AP’s review. Minorities accounted for 73 percent of those street encounters between 2011 and early 2015, according to city data released last year.
A Boston police spokesman said the AP review was “not appropriate and quite frankly irresponsible,” because the data doesn’t consider neighborhood crime statistics, a subject’s prior arrests and gang affiliations, among other factors.