The Oakland chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has called on KTVU to immediately reinstate anchor Frank Somerville, who was “suspended indefinitely” last week after a disagreement with Channel 2’s news director over coverage of the Gabby Petito homicide case.
The NAACP has scheduled a Saturday media conference “in support of” Somerville. Also, Oakland NAACP president George Holland Sr. has sent a letter to Mellynda Hartel, vice president and general manager of Fox News, in which he wrote: “Instead of punishing (Somerville), KTVU should be honoring him and elevating his example.”
The newsroom disagreement, said KTVU sources 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 add a brief commentary about racial inequity to a straight news update of the Petito story. Somerville had wanted to call attention to the glaring disparities in media coverage of White crime victims versus people of color.
Eikel and newsroom producers determined that it wasn’t the proper time or place to run the “tagline,” which would have taken less than a minute of airtime. Somerville, sources say, protested the cut and was overruled. The next day, Somerville was informed he was being suspended.
Largely because KTVU management and the parties involved have declined to comment on the matter, a full picture of what actually took place in the newsroom has yet to be made public. In that void, much social media outrage has been directed at KTVU and Eikel.
Now the NAACP has taken sides and, in a rather improbable twist, Somerville, a 63-year-old White journalist, has become a hero of a Black Lives Matter spinoff issue. (Somerville is the adoptive father of a Black teen daughter).
News and entertainment outlets ranging from Huffington Post, Newsweek and the U.K. Daily Mail to “The Real” syndicated TV talk show have all addressed the issue and its ties to the “missing White woman syndrome.”
In his letter to Hartel, NAACP president Holland called for Somerville’s “immediate reinstatement” and urged the station to host “public discourse” on this topic, and hold “leadership development training” for those involved in the decision to suspend Somerville.
“We appreciate Mr. Somerville’s integrity and willingness to ask incisive questions that challenge those inside and outside his bubble,” Holland wrote.
The NAACP media conference is scheduled for 11 a.m. in Oakland’s Jack London Square.
It has been a turbulent year for Somerville. Not long before the recent suspension, he spent nine-plus weeks away from the news desk after making an early exit from a May 30 newscast during which he repeatedly slurred and stumbled over his words.
Neither KTVU nor Somerville has publicly commented on that leave of absence, which the station said was taken “to focus on his health.”
Somerville’s contract at KTVU expires in March, a situation that has given rise to speculation about his future with Channel 2.
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