“I’m human. We mess up”: Lisa Millar apologises over racism in sport comment
"I made a mistake yesterday and I am sorry." ABC presenter says she clumsily worded her comments around Nick Kyrgios dealing with racist taunts.
- Published by David Knox
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News Breakfast presenter Lisa Millar has apologised for comments she made yesterday on ABC following tennis champ Nick Kyrgios being subjected to racist taunts at at the Stuttgart Open.
Kyrgios took to Instagram to complain about crowd comments which the ATP tournament said were unacceptable and would be investigated.
Yesterday when Tony Armstrong shook his head in frustration at racism in sport, Millar remarked, “There’s no room for racism, but I do wonder whether it’s good for him… (Ed: sentence unfinished)… like, there will be other people who will say ‘You’ve just got to ignore that. You’ve got to block that out.'”
But suggesting racist taunts should simply be ignored also drew fierce criticism on social media.
WTF is Lisa Millar @BreakfastNews on about? Has she no idea? That’s “oblivious” white privilege writ large? She needs some real world internal @ABCaustralia “professional development”? #Racism most unacceptable of human evils. Always! #journalism #ethics pic.twitter.com/GsIFcy49cB
— Peter Clarke (@MediaActive) June 13, 2022
Earlier today she told ABC viewers, “Before we go this hour, I want to address something that I said yesterday that I regret. We were talking about Nick Kyrgios and the appalling and unacceptable behaviour from the crowd during his match with Andy Murray.
“I didn’t intend to minimise the abuse that was directed to him. What I said and the clumsy way I said it was wrong. I’m human. We mess up. I made a mistake yesterday and I am sorry. No-one should have to deal with racist taunts and I don’t want anyone to be in any doubt about how strongly I feel about this. I’m a big Kyrgios fan. I’m looking forward to seeing what he’s got in store for us at Wimbledon.”
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6 Responses
Anytime a statement begins with “There’s no room for racism, but…..” ,you should probably stop talking.
Not a very sincere apology at all.
My empathy in this instance is with Lisa Millar; not with Nick Kyrgios.
Goodness me Lisa cops a fair whack from twitter which is undeserved. I challenge anyone to do 15 hours of live TV a week and never say anything stupid. She made a regrettable comment and apologised, let’s move on
Watched it go out live… what she said was possibly a little clumsily phrased, but it is live TV. Think I understood what Lisa Millar was probably trying to get across – which *I think* was that Nick Kyrgios doesn’t always do himself many favours because despite being a really great talent he also has a famously highly volatile temper which frequently flares up.
Oh please, people really need to go outside and look at the more significant real-world problems affecting people, rather than turning a little comment like that nto a bigger issue than it needs to be. As if there needed to be an apology at all.
I’m more annoyed about the fact Iskhandar didn’t apologise for incorrectly saying it was Wednesday instead of Monday if anything.