CHICAGO _ A nationally syndicated talk radio star who regularly mocked Chicago homicide victims on air is yanking the segment and has apologized, saying, "I have to make better decisions with the words I use."
Michael Berry _ earlier this month named the nation's "top talk personality" by radio giant iHeartRadio _ offended many Chicagoans when they learned that he encouraged listeners to play a bingo game in which they guessed where in the body victims were shot.
The Chicago Tribune reported March 2 that Houston-based conservative Berry also ridiculed the name of 14-year-old Tyjuan Poindexter, the unintended and blameless victim of a September 2015 drive-by shooting, and mocked dozens of other shooting victims in his regular Monday morning segment "Chicago Weekend Crime Update."
Neither Berry nor iHeartMedia, which owns iHeartRadio and broadcasts his show across the nation, had commented on the outrage that emerged after the liberal-leaning media monitoring organization Media Matters first shined a spotlight on Berry's history of insensitive and racially charged comments.
But on Friday afternoon Berry said during his show that he was "bothered" by the "valid criticism" he had received and that he had gone too far in his search for laughs.
"I read some comments that people had posted, that I was mocking crime victims," he said on the air. "And my immediate reaction is, 'You're stupid, you're dumb, you're criticizing me _ I'm not going to listen to you.' But I sat down with my wife and we read through them, and I realized I could see where somebody would say that. I would come off, 'You're right. That is a valid criticism,' and I have thought over that a lot in the last week."
"It bothered me a lot," he told listeners. "And we decided that we would discontinue that segment, as much as we think it's important to highlight the problems of crime. And I also wanted to apologize because some people took the time to post to me that that bothered them and why _ in very thoughtful comments _ and they deserve an apology. And I have to make better decisions with the words I use."
Berry and an iHeartMedia spokeswoman did not respond to questions Monday about whether Berry, 46, had been pushed by his bosses to make the apology, which did not name any of the specific victims that Berry had mocked.
His comments about Poindexter, in particular, upset many, including the Rev. Michael Pfleger, of St. Sabina Catholic Church on Chicago's South Side, who posted on Facebook that iHeartRadio's decision to honor Berry with a national award was "disgusting."
Berry had chortled that Poindexter "won't have to live with that name anymore," after the teen was killed.
"At least they're not indiscriminately firing at black people," Berry added in the 2015 broadcast. "At least they're saying, 'Are those the black people, because we want to make sure we get the right ones' even if they didn't."
In his on-air apology Friday, though, Berry described himself as a "comedian wannabe" and said that he had been trying to draw attention to the problem of "Children, walking to school, being gunned down or in their own home."
