(CBS News) -- A TV meteorologist at an NBC affiliate in Rochester, New York was fired after being accused of using an on-air racial slur in reference to Martin Luther King Jr. However, WHEC-TV chief meteorologist Jeremy Kappell says he simply "jumbled" his words during Friday's broadcast.
A video posted to social media of Kappell's broadcast shows him apparently calling a park named for the slain civil rights leader "Martin Luther Coon King Jr. Park."
WHEC-TV general manager Richard Reingold wrote on the station's website the station made a "staffing change" Sunday. "These words have no place on News10NBC's air, and the fact that we broadcast them disheartens and disgusts me," he wrote.
Kappell responded in a Facebook video Monday night, saying in part:
"If you watch me regularly you know that I contain a lot of information in my weathercast which forces me to speak fast and unfortunately, I spoke a little too fast when I was referencing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. -- so fast that I jumbled a couple of words. In my mind I knew that I had mispronounced, but there was no malice, there was nothing I could have... I had no idea the way it had come across to many people. As soon as I mispronounced it I put an emphasis on King and had no idea what some people could have interpreted that as and I know some people interpreted that the wrong way. That was not a word that I said, I promise you that. And if you did feel that and it hurt you in any way, I sincerely apologize."
In 2010, ESPN talk show host Mike Greenberg used the same phrase on a radio show in an apparent verbal flub and issued an apology later in the day. He was not disciplined.