1/31/2024 0 Comments Frank somervilleThere have been countless stories of black and brown homicide victims that never make it to national media. Whether or not Frank Somerville has a drinking problem, he’s right about the Gabby Petito thing. Their murders are compiled and presented to the viewer as a statistic, dehumanizing the victim in the process. According to reports from a number of reputable news agencies, this dispute cost Frank his job. Frank requested that at the end of their scheduled Gabby Petito coverage, KTVU add a blurb about how the mainstream news media disproportionately covers missing persons cases involving white victims, overlooking similar cases involving people of color. In September of 2021, he was suspended indefinitely (corporate double speak for fucking fired) from KTVU after a dispute regarding comments he made to KTVU behind the scenes about racial equity while covering the murder of Gabby Petito. In reporting about Somerville’s suspension, The Chronicle cited sources who said he recently had been disciplined by KTVU for what the station deemed to be inappropriate political opinions about the new Texas abortion law and the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.Frank requested that at the end of their scheduled Gabby Petito coverage, KTVU add a blurb about how the mainstream news media disproportionately covers missing persons cases involving white victims, overlooking similar cases involving people of color. But his openness can also be a source of friction. That fan base is obviously a major plus for Somerville - and KTVU. (Julie Haener, his Channel 2 co-anchor, has 33,000.) The veteran anchor has a history of expressing his personal opinions - often passionately - on social media, and it has paid off in a massive fandom.įor example, no Bay Area TV news personality can match his reach on Facebook, where he has nearly 600,000 followers. ![]() It’s a stance that stands in stark contrast with Somerville’s typically open approach to interacting with the public. When Somerville abruptly left a June 3 newscast in which he slurred his words, four days passed before Victoria Gurrieri, a New York-based spokesperson for Fox - the network that owns and operates KTVU - finally announced that he was taking some time off “to focus on his health.”Īnd when Somerville returned to the anchor desk nine weeks later, neither he nor the station addressed his lengthy absence. Both Somerville and Eikel have declined to speak on the record, and repeated calls to a company spokesperson have gone unanswered as of this writing. One KTVU source, requesting anonymity, bluntly described the newsroom environment as “a total (expletive) show.”Ĭomplicating the situation is KTVU’s long-standing practice of refusing to publicly address such matters. Meanwhile, the conflict has sparked outrage from Somerville supporters who believe he is being censored and that KTVU is perpetrating “missing White woman syndrome,” a term coined by the late PBS anchor Gwen Ifill to describe the media’s often lopsided focus on the disappearance of White women and girls. The following day, Somerville was informed that he was being suspended. Somerville apparently protested the cut and was overruled. ![]() While not necessarily dismissing the validity of Somerville’s proposal, Eikel and newsroom producers concluded that it wasn’t the proper time or place to run the “tagline,” which would have taken less than a minute of airtime. Somerville had wanted to point out the glaring disparities in media coverage of White crime victims versus people of color. The disagreement, said sources at KTVU who declined to give their names because they were not authorized to go on the record, occurred when news director Amber Eikel rejected Somerville’s proposal to tack a brief commentary about racial inequity onto a straight news update of the Petito story. It’s not clear when he might return - if ever. ![]() He was not on the air Sunday night and wasn’t expected to be back Monday. Somerville, 63, was “suspended indefinitely” last week by Channel 2 management after a disagreement with KTVU’s news director over coverage of the Gabby Petito homicide case. ![]() As KTVU’s suspension of popular anchor Frank Somerville continues to provoke a social media uproar, the incident has raised more questions than answers.
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