St. Louis Radio Host Removed Over Careless Race Talk

It seems that sometimes people who are radio and television hosts assume that because they have the freedom to express their opinions, that they are absolved of doing so in such a way that they are not offending other people in ways that may be deemed unacceptable by their employers or business partners. A St. Louis sports-talk radio host appears to be one of those people.

According to a report by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, veteran host Kevin Slaten’s show was cancelled because he made some very careless statements on air. Slaten said that many Black people only voted for President Barack Obama because he is Black.

While some radio stations allow their hosts to say inflammatory things on air for the sake of higher ratings,  sports-talk station KFNS is either not one of those stations or they are but still felt Slaten had gone too far.

Because Slaten was not directly employed by the station and was actually an independent contractor, he was not fired but his show was certainly canceled.

Slaten made the comments on Thursday, during his broadcast, saying the fact that 93 percent of blacks voted for Obama meant that they were bigoted in their voting.

On Monday, Katy Pavelonis, the station general manager, confirmed that Slaten was let go.

Maybe when word gets around that Slaten lost his gig for making borderline racist comments, we will start to hear less offensive comments from radio and television host in other stations and networks.