Alex Housden in tears while apologising

  

A white TV news anchor, Alex Housden apologized live on air to her black co-anchor for saying he looked like a gorilla in a zoo.

 

The TV anchor had on Monday compared her black co-anchor on KOCO 5 TV, Jason Hackett, to a gorilla in Oklahoma zoo and has now apologized to him live on television.

 

Alex Housden, who hosts the morning show at KOCO 5 TV, sparked outrage during a segment about a baby western lowland gorilla named Fin recording selfie videos. The initially lighthearted segment quickly turned viral after Housden said to her co-host, Jason Hackett, who is black, that Fin “kind of looks like you when you take a picture.”

 

“Yeah, it does, actually, yeah … very close to the camera,” Hackett replied after a brief pause.

 

The next morning, however, Housden and Hackett sat beside each other on a couch as she tearfully apologized to her colleague and to viewers over her “inappropriate” comment.

 

“I said something yesterday that was inconsiderate, it was inappropriate and I hurt people,” she said. “I want you to know I understand how much I hurt you all out there and how much I hurt you. I would never do anything on purpose to hurt you.”

 

Housden described Hackett as her “best friend” and insisted that she would never “do anything on purpose to hurt”him.

 

Hackett accepted Housden’s apology and said the incident was a “teachable moment.”

 

“What she said yesterday was wrong. It cut deep for me and a lot of you in the community. The lesson here is that words matter,” he said.

 

“We are becoming a more diverse country and there is no excuse.”

 

Watch video below: