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Former KTBS-TV meteorologist Rhonda Lee
“The black lady that does the news is a very nice lady.the only thing is she needs to wear a wig or grow some more hair. im not sure if she is a cancer patient. but still its not something myself that i think looks good on tv. what about letting someone a male have waist long hair do the news.what about that (cq).”
– Viewer Emmitt Vascocu, addressing Shreveport, La. ABC affiliate KTBS-TV’s meteorologist Rhonda Lee‘s hairstyle, a short natural afro.
For those of us who have endured numerous ignorant comments about natural (nappy) hair that expose the embedded racist belief that there is “good hair” (Euro) and “bad hair,” in patient moments it can be a teachable moment. That’s what meteorologist Rhonda Lee did in response to Vascocu’s post:
“Hello Emmitt–I am the ‘black lady’ to which you are referring. I’m sorry you don’t like my ethnic hair. And no I don’t have cancer. I’m a non-smoking, 5’3, 121 lbs, 25 mile a week running, 37.5 year old woman, and I’m in perfectly healthy physical condition.
“I am very proud of my African-American ancestry which includes my hair. For your edification: traditionally our hair doesn’t grow downward. It grows upward. Many Black women use strong straightening agents in order to achieve a more European grade of hair and that is their choice. However in my case I don’t find it necessary. I’m very proud of who I am and the standard of beauty I display. Women come in all shapes, sizes, nationalities, and levels of beauty. Showing little girls that being comfortable in the skin and HAIR God gave me is my contribution to society. Little girls (and boys for that matter) need to see that what you look like isn’t a reason to not achieve their goals.
“Conforming to one standard isn’t what being American is about and I hope you can embrace that.
“Thank you for your comment and have a great weekend and thank for watching.”
Vascocu replied that Lee was right to be proud of who she is and that he is not a racist, but “. . . this world has . . . certain standerd (cq). if youve come from a world of being poor are you going to dress in rags?. . .”
Yes. That’s not racist.
KTBS fired Lee, stating she violated a company rule.
Lee wrote to Journal-isms:
“I had a meeting with my ND [news director] and GM [general manager] Friday trying to get my job back. They told me the policy I violated isn’t written down, but was mentioned in a newsroom meeting about a month-and-a-half prior. A meeting I didn’t attend. So when I asked what rule did I break there isn’t anything to point to.
“The week I was brought in to discuss [the] last post, I was told by my ND that there were a few unclear things in the policy and that we were going to have a meeting with George Sirven, the GM about it. I was instead fired the next week — no discussion had. Sirven claims that even if a policy isn’t on paper we as employees are responsible for abiding by them. There isn’t anything in our employee manual talking about social media dos and don’ts. I was accountable for a rule that essentially isn’t in existence.”‘
“. . . Race has been the issue with me since I started. That much is VERY true. Weather is an older white boy business and arms have been less than open for a young black girl — a polar opposite. As reported I’ve had more problems here in the south than I have anywhere else in my 25+ years in the business. Perhaps there is a pattern, but I am a glutton for punishment (ha, ha), and I want what I deserve as any professional would so if I have to fight for it I will.”
Randy Bain, KTBS news director, responded to the situation on the station’s Facebook page (something unusual since personnel matters are usually not publicly discussed by an employer), feeling public heat from the decision to fire Lee:
On November 28, 2012, KTBS dismissed two employees for repeated violation of the station’s written procedure. We can confirm that Rhonda Lee was one of the employees. Another employee was a white male reporter who was an eight year veteran of the station. The policy they violated provided a specific procedure for responding to viewer comments on the official KTBS Facebook page. Included is an email that was sent to all news department employees informing them of this procedure. This procedure is based on advice from national experts and commonly used by national broadcast and cable networks and local television stations across the country.
Unfortunately, television personalities have long been subject to harsh criticism and negative viewer comments about their appearance and performance. If harsh viewer comments are posted on the station’s official website, there is a specific procedure to follow.
Ms. Rhonda Lee was let go for repeatedly violating that procedure and after being warned multiple times of the consequences if her behavior continued. Rhonda Lee was not dismissed for her appearance or defending her appearance. She was fired for continuing to violate company procedure.
You might recall another station that handled a viewer’s commentary about an on-air employee’s appearance quite differently. WKBT News 8 in La Crosse, Wisconsin, Jennifer Livingston, actually won praise for her response to an attack on her weight.
Livingston recently received an email from a male viewer criticizing her weight. Her husband and fellow news anchor Mike Thompson posted the text to the Facebook page for “WKBT News 8 This Morning.”
“I was surprised indeed to witness that your physical condition hasn’t improved for many years,” wrote the viewer, who said Livingston was not a “suitable example” for young girls. “I leave you this note hoping that you’ll reconsider your responsibility as a local public personality to present and promote a healthy lifestyle.”
Livingston addressed her bully on-air Tuesday, prefacing her message by saying that she has received words of support from “hundreds” of people and that the response has been “truly inspiring.”
“The truth is, I am overweight,” she said. “But to the person who wrote me that letter, do you think I don’t know that? That your cruel words are pointing out something that I don’t see? You don’t know me… so you know nothing about me but what you see on the outside and I am much more than a number on a scale.”
Why the difference in treatment of these employees? Surely an on-air (read consuming time set aside for news) is more disruptive than a post on social media, if we’re strictly talking about impact on the station’s reputation or business concerns. And that’s why Livingston has Lee’s back:
In an email Tuesday, Livingston wrote, “If someone is going to post on a public site, there should be a reasonable expectation that those comments will be addressed.”
Of course, you need to do so in a respectful and thoughtful manner. I think we as journalists are still trying to pave the way with integrating social media into our daily workflow. No clear rules have been defined so every station is different.
Personally – I’d have written that person back in a heartbeat.
In the end, Lee paid with her job for simply, with grace, addressing a viewer on social media. Whatever policy was violated, KTBS is paying a steeper PR price than if it had let the post be.
Rhonda Lee on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/metrhondaalee
KTBS on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/KTBS3
Phone: (318) 861-5800
Email: ksmith@ktbs.com
Website: http://www.ktbs.com
H/ts, Patrick O’Neill, DKos’s Steven D and Vita Brevis.
37 Comments
This kind of treatment doesn’t surprise me at all coming from Louisiana.
Ms. Lee’s response was outstanding, succinct, well reasoned, and done with much more politeness and consideration than I would have been able to manage. For the station to have fired her, and then not being able to point to a legitimate reason for their actions is egregious. They should have been supporting her.
Hopefully, Ms. Lee can file a suit for wrongful termination. She should.
Documentation, documentation, documentation. I’d hope the station has documentation to prove what they said happened actually happened, such as documentation of multiple meetings where they told the meteorologist she was repeatedly violating the new policy.
Whether there was an email announcement of the new policy as the station claims, or announcement of the new policy at a staff meeting that not all of the staff attended as the meteorologist claimed, has the same weight as an actual update of the station’s policy manual seems to me to be a failure of station management and the human relations department.
The policy manual should have been quickly updated — late August to early December allowed plenty of time for the station to update their policy manual. And once the policy manual was change, the staff should have been made to sign documentation stating that they’d read and understood this new and important change to the previous social media commenting policy. That these things didn’t happens speaks volumes about the poor management and inadequate functioning of the human relations department.
And, of course, the sad thing now is that when one looks at the linked Facebook page for the station, the four newscasters at the top of the page are all white. That alone doesn’t speak well of the station’s commitment to diversity; that gives me reason to believe the station’s accounting of what happened didn’t happen, and that they don’t have the documentation to prove their account of the story is true.
I think KTBS will quickly learn the meaning of “wrongful termination”.
Also, how to right a check for $475,000..or maybe more.
Thanks Pam.
Wow.
Of course all that the station will do is backing and filling for trying to prove that they did something they should have done, but didn’t actually, you know, do it. Unfortunately, she will have to bring her case in LA and that doesn’t bode well for the first go around.
I agree that in Northern Louisiana, Shreveport in particular, it’s no surprise that she would get fired. I’ve never travelled to a more racist place than the Shreveport area. Visiting relatives there in the 80s and 90s as a child, I was shocked at the racism I saw, and the frequest cross burnings I’d see on the nightly news.
The Civil War and Jim Crow never ended there, and a black woman standing up for her rights against a goofball’s complaint will get her fired. I hope she does sue, big time!
As a lifelong Southerner, and an old white guy to boot, and one who thinks Ms. Lee responded to the viewer correctly (and a damsite more gracefully than I would have), I appreciate being lumped into the stereotype “This kind of treatment doesn’t surprise me at all coming from Louisiana.”
Apparently, stereotyping lurks everywhere and can catch one unawares.
I am from New Orleans. My family is still there. They would stand up for Rhonda Lee. Believe me when I say this could easily have happened in Sacramento where I live now. Or San Francisco. Or where ever.
It is not stereotyping if an action falls into a pattern of conduct. How were you stereotyped?
Good luck to Ms. Lee. Unfortunate but not totally surprising, and not just bc it’s in LA. Could happen almost anywhere these days, more’s the pity. Hope Ms. Lee can successfully file suit for wrongful termination, but it definitely depends on what the policy is.
There is a lot of difference between New Orleans and Shreveport. Racism exists all over, but in some places more than others.
But on the other hand, David Duke lives in Metairie right outside of New Orleans. Metairie is just a geographic extension of New Orleans.
The same way you just stereotyped yourself with that comment.
On the positive side (if there really is one), the station’s Facebook page is being completely inundated by people protesting this action. No matter what they (the station) post, people leaving comments only talk about the shabby treatment of Rhonda Lee.
Let’s hope this backlash continues and, more importantly, has an effect on the station’s bottom line.
Most Northerners carry their own ignorance with them, and liberals are as slow to give theirs up as anyone else. I grew up in a civil rights family in the north and came to live in the South as an adult, so have viewed the thing from both sides. The two most segregated cities are in the north (Philly and Milwaukee), and black and white people are often on better terms with one another, generally speaking, in the South than in many places in the North. I only really came to have lots of Black friends when I moved south. Most of my white Northern friends are all for Black people in theory, but just don’t know any, because they live in suburbs they have never even noticed are segregated. Virulent racism can be found everywhere–I saw a lot of it in the pickup truck portions of California; the Klan started in Indiana. . . Even the red state/blue state thing is a matter of five-six percentage points, but people would just rather live in their Manichean, often pretty poorly analyzed bubbles, and write off whole portions of humanity rather than reach out to them. Onward and upward.
I hope Ms. Lee ends up with a very large check, courtesy of KTBS-TV. It would be even cooler if she lands a better gig out of the deal, and the idiot(s) responsible for whacking her out ends up out on the bricks.
No.
Case closed.
The War on (Some Ladies’) Hair is a helluva lot more interesting, and real, than the War on Xmas. I left a comment at the station’s FB page; I wonder how long it will stay up.
The funniest part of this is that the station then went on to violate its own (probably written) policy about not commenting on personnel matters, which will make its lawyers absolutely CRAZY.
I hope this woman gets a smart lawyer and the fat check she deserves.
So, you’re taking the employer’s response (a violation of its own policy, by the way) as gospel, when the employee says she was never told the policy and the employer admits it was never written down and never communicated to her.
You get the Good Employee Medal today!
Apparently you prefer to comment without reading for context. Better luck on a different thread.
The problem she will face in LA is not that the whole state is racist, but that many of the people in power are, including the judges. The judge in any case she brings will probably be friendly with the station owner or manager and very locally friendly. As nonpartisanliberal points out, Shreveport and that area of LA is, in my experience, much more racist than NO. I hope that I am wrong this time around.
BTW, when school bussing for integration came to Boston, the crowds molesting the busses there looked exactly like the crowds in Little Rock.
Lol @ the Southerners getting insulted at being stereotyped. Because clearly that’s the most important thing here.
This woman was fired because they were looking for a reason to fire her. This woman’s post was in no way offensive. Obviously, someone has a son in law or other relative that will be filling the position.
Sue.
Yeah, but… slavery and its inherent degradations of the African race was an institution of the South, and seems to be a sick dream by many down there, still. While liberals may “carry their own ignorance”, this is a false balance compared to the cracker-ass shit that keeps on spewing, to this day, from the South and CONservative areas (e.g. Indiana). That’s how it is so these “comparisons” between liberals and ignorant crackers intended to what, I am not sure, are simply horseshit.
That could be, but it really doesn’t make sense. If they wanted to get rid of her, well, most employers can always find a way, but to fire her over a racial issue with all the potential issues, public relations, and litigation lurking in the background seems a really dumb business decision.
“Let’s hope this backlash continues and, more importantly, has an effect on the station’s bottom line.”
Yes…
Arbitrary and capricious corporate slime acting under the color of law, is essentially violating this woman’s right to free expression, in a public setting. A Facebook page. Corporations and states always attempt to employ unconstitutional laws muzzling people for reasons not deserved. Fuck KTBS……
This kind of treatment doesn’t surprise me at all coming from media’s “corporate slime-balls.
Free speech doesn’t have anything to do with it, at least in the sense that the 1st amendment only prevents the government from taking action against you. It doesn’t prevent the private sector from doing it.
The station may well have violated some employment law, just not the constitution.
No one said it was the most important issue.
But a characterization of southerners was thought of as something important enough to be initially posted.
By assuming that all Louisianians, and by inference Southerners, have the same pattern of conduct.
Is there more overt racism in the South? I can make a pretty good case there is. Obama lost among white voters, but by even larger margins in the South. IIRC, polling showed that controlling for all other issues, race was a determining factor in the South. I don’t like it, but that’s the reality.
But to assume all Southerners have the same pattern of conduct is akin to assuming all African-Americans eat fried chicken.
Show me where I said that. A close reading of my comments leads with my thoughts about how Ms. Lee handled her situation.
Followed by pointing out an ironic stereotype, given the subject matter in the article.
It is possible to peel off enough Southern votes to make a difference in elections. My home state went Obama in 2008, and we gave the nation Helms back in the day. Obviously, there is work to be done, and it it is work worth doing.
It is not helpful to lump us all together. Republicans do that to blacks, and we see how that works.
I could pack my bags and leave for safe and approved habitat. I choose to stay and fight.
Doesn’t surprise me either. It is one of the reasons I left.
Those of us in the South really do get sick and tired of all the self righteous comments about racist, redneck, hillbilly crackers whenever something unpleasant occurs in the South. There really IS a double standard. Racists and homophobes exist everywhere in this country, but in no other part of the nation does an entire state or region get painted by the same brush when sh*t happens.
And white people derail a post about racism by making it all about them. So surprised!
sounds like she responded courteously. so, unless the station’s policy was known to this lady, i hope she’d sue them till hell freezes over.
when whites stop acting defensive about racism/stop defending racist behavior, then they have no “inclusiveness’ to be afraid of. if you ain’t racist, you don’t fall under the same brush, so to speak.
as i have heard said, me thinks thou dost protest too much. i hear a lot of defending such bad behavior in that “broad brush” response.
being white is no gimme one way or the other. we are all human.
This is exactly the kind of ignorance I’m talking about. Northern liberals got rich off of slavery then–by profiting from its products, including when the cotton came north to be processed–and they profit from Southern non-union products and right-to-work laws now. Meanwhile, there are more private militias in the midwest than the south, etcetera. And–I’m convinced–as much prejudice, including among many liberals. It’s a system of institutionalized racism and violence, and most liberals don’t see that. Including, apparently, you.
Open and shut case of ugly, who would dispute it? None of these arguments ever get at the way racism is institutionalized, however. And that’s as much a northern thing as a southern thing, implicates a brown president bombing brown people on Tuesdays as much as it implicates stupid people in Louisiana. . . in a story that might have taken place anywhere. Just to give you one example: my brown daughter has had liberal Michigan relatives say stupid shit about her hair several times. . . Making the point that racism is all but universal or that oversimple comments about the South don’t really serve is not really hijacking the thread.