Radio station pulls show for tsunami slur

NEW YORK - The entire staff of the New York radio show "Miss Jones in the Morning" was taken off the air on Wednesday after broadcasting a song that ridiculed victims of the tsunami in South Asia, the radio station said.

New York FM radio station WQHT, or HOT 97, repeatedly ran the segment last week on the show, hosted by deejay Tarsha Nicole Jones who uses the on-air name Miss Jones.

Jones and her team were suspended indefinitely, according to publicist Lizzie Grubman, who declined to say whether Jones would feature in another show at a later date.

"What happened is morally and socially indefensible," said Rick Cummings, president of Emmis Radio. The station is owned by Emmis Communications Corp.

"All involved, myself included, are ashamed and deeply sorry. I know the members of the morning show are truly contrite. They know their actions here are inexcusable," Cummings said in a statement.

The piece used racial slurs to describe people swept away in the disaster, made jokes about child slavery and people watching their mothers die.

"You can hear God laughing, 'Swim you bitches swim,"' was one line in the song, sung by staff of the show to the melody of the 1985 famine relief song "We Are the World."

On Monday, the hip-hop and R&B radio station and the deejay apologised and the seven-member morning show crew agreed to donate one week's pay to relief efforts. The tsunami struck on Dec. 26, leaving nearly 300,000 dead or missing around the Indian Ocean from Somalia to Thailand.

The incident is not the first time HOT 97 has been accused of racism and poor taste. The station made headlines when deejay Star, now at another radio station, called Jennifer Lopez a "rice-and-bean eater" and satirized the plane crash that killed R&B singer Aaliyah in 2001.

- REUTERS