A radio station in Ohio, which last week held a contest offering the prize of a weekend in Arizona -- where "Americans are proud and illegals are scared" -- offered an on-air apology yesterday for the insensitive stunt.
Brian Dytko, the station manager for News Talk 610 WTVN in Columbus, Ohio, personally apologized to listeners after local community leaders expressed outrage over the contest.
Check out all of Dytko's apology after the jump.
"This is Brian Dytko, Station Manager of WTVN with a message regarding our station's recent "Win a Trip to Phoenix, Arizona" promotional contest. Our contest was meant as a humorous response to a City of Columbus ban on travel to Arizona by city employees. In fact, a key element of the promotion was that city employees were specifically invited to enter the contest. We regret that our promotional copy has been characterized as condoning violence. This was not our intent, and we do not condone violence of any kind. We apologize for our actions here. We are always striving to engage our community on important issues of the day and sometimes we do a better job than others, but we always take the input of our community seriously."
The contest was the idea of John Corby, a radio personality for the station, and, as you can see in the above promotion, "chasing aliens" is only a taste of the language used that has Ohio immigrants' rights advocates furious.
"You'll spend a weekend chasing aliens and spending cash in the desert, just make sure you've got your green card! Win round trip airfare to Phoenix, hotel accommodations, and a few pesos in spending cash -- just register below," the promotion explains.
The contest is in response to Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman (that's his mug on the ID card), who prohibited all city-funded travel after SB 1070 was signed by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer.
Corby, as far as we know, has not apologized for the contest, so we contacted him to see if he supported the apology of his station manager. He never got back to us.
