‘Honesty must apply to everyone’: former WBZ -anchor Kate Merrill makes first public comments about a lawsuit

Kate Merrill, the former WBZ anchor who claims that she has been discriminated against because she is white, acknowledged her lawsuit against her old employer for the first time on Wednesday.

“For more than two decades I have proudly shared Boston’s stories as a journalist at WBZ TV. wrote on her public Facebook account.

Merrill brought a federal court case earlier this month, a year after she abruptly left her anchoring shortly after her 20-year anniversary at WBZ. She sues $ 4 million and claims that she was discriminated against based on her gender and her race.

The defendants who are mentioned in the case, his Jason Mikell, who was a newly hired black meteorologist when Merrill left the station, and Courtney Cole, a black anchor, who allegedly accused her of micro -aggressions and unconscious bias.

Merrill was relegated from the weekday show to working weekend evenings, which characterized the lawsuit as a ‘career -end’.

“It is with deep sadness that I am now in the position to file a legal complaint against a station and company that I once considered part of my family,” Merrill said Wednesday. “This decision was not taken lightly. It was taken because I believe that fairness must apply to everyone, regardless of race, gender or background and I was not treated fairly.”

Merrill: ‘I support efforts to ensure that Newsrooms reflect the communities they must reflect’

In the court case, Merrill denies that all her actions were motivated by open racism or unconscious bias.

“I support efforts to ensure that Newsrooms reflect the communities they should reflect,” she wrote on Facebook.

“That is not what this case is about,” she continued. “It’s about ensuring that nobody is wrongly put aside, simply because an organization wants to reach a target or an agenda.”

Merrill submitted an HR complaint about Mikell after he screamed and confronted for correcting his statement by ‘Concord’, according to the court case. About a week later, Merrill was informed that she was being investigated after simultaneous allegations from Cole and Mikell.

She was accused of telling Mikell that he would “find his people” in Boston. She was also accused of criticizing routinely, not asking him about his weekends and saying that he could be a garbage collector during “dirty lane” Scherts His segment jobsAccording to the court case.

Merrill would have recommended Cole that she worked in Nashville, which Cole would consider that it would be “a better racial fit for her,” said the court case. Merrill claims that the comment was about career opportunities and how much Merrill enjoyed working in Nashville.

When she was investigated by her company, Merrill defended her statements and said that “all my garbage collectors are white” and that Nashville is not a majority minority city, the court case said.

“Boston is my home.”

In the court case, Merrill claims that Mikell had asked her to help him with his statement, and according to SMS messages in the court case, he had his superior.

“I spent my career with the emergence of voices from all communities, guiding young journalists of every background and treating stories that reflect the entire spectrum of life in our city,” Merrill wrote on Facebook. “I am proud of that legacy and I remain proud of the work I did at WBZ.”

“Boston is my home,” Merrill continued. “Telling the stories of this city has been my greatest professional privilege. I hope that this process will also be honored by this process.”

Molly Farrar is a general allocation reporter for Boston.com, aimed at education, politics, crime and more.