Saturday, April 8, 2017

Report: iHM Working On 'Guidelines' For Talk Hosts

iHeartMedia is working on a code of on-air conduct for its talk show hosts and DJs in the wake of on-air jokes about Chicago murder victims, reports The Chicago Tribune.

The Chicago Urban League says it was given by the company's executives this week.

Despite owning major black Chicago radio stations including WVON and WGCI, the San Antonio-based company has repeatedly declined to comment on the furor over Michael Berry's regular segment mocking African-American murder victims on his nationally syndicated show, according to The Tribune.

Berry, a white conservative who is iHeartMedia's "talk personality of the year," last month apologized on air for the segment that included crude racial stereotypes, a bingo game in which listeners had to guess where in the body victims had been shot, and Berry mocking the name of a blameless black teen killed by a stray bullet. Berry said in his apology that he would end the segment, only to suggest two weeks later that he missed doing it.

But Chicago Urban League's senior vice president, Paula Thornton Greear, said that during a conference call this week with the Rev. Michael Pfleger and Rufus Williams of BFF Family Services and iHeartMedia executive Greg Ashlock, Ashlock said that Berry was a "good man" and that "they are working on some guidelines that their on-air hosts would follow."

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