ABC News big target in race probe

ABC News placed a top executive on administrative leave as it investigates claims she made racist and other insensitive remarks.

Barbara Fedida, ABC News’ senior vice president for talent and business, has been the subject of more than a dozen human resources complaints and a 2016 HR investigation, HuffPost reported Saturday.

“There are deeply disturbing allegations in this story that we need to investigate, and we have placed Barbara Fedida on administrative leave while we conduct a thorough and complete investigation,” ABC News said in a statement to the Daily News.

“These allegations do not represent the values and culture of ABC News, where we strive to make everyone feel respected in a thriving, diverse and inclusive workplace,” it said.

Among the claims in the HuffPost story: In 2018, while discussing the contract renewal for “Good Morning America” anchor Robin Roberts — a black woman who is among the network’s most well-known figures — Fedida didn’t want to give Roberts a pay increase.

Instead, she asked what more Roberts could want, noting that it wasn’t as if ABC was asking the star anchor to “pick cotton,” a witness to the conversation told HuffPost.

Some HR complaints against Fedida mention a luncheon at which she asked subordinates which employee they thought would most likely perpetrate a mass shooting.

ABC News anchor Byron Pitts, who is black, told HuffPost he does not believe Fedida to be racist.

“I know what racism looks, smells and sounds like. Barbara Fedida is not any of those things,” he said. “But I am respectful of other colleagues who had a different experience.”

Fedida, in a statement distributed by her lawyer, told HuffPost she has always “been a champion for increased diversity in network news” and pointed to “decades of work of hiring, supporting and promoting talented journalists of color. And, unlike these heartbreaking and incredibly misleading claims about me, that track record is well-documented and undeniable.”