Hitz.fm is amongst the largest and most influential radio stations within Malaysia, and along with its contemporary, upbeat content are throngs of young people who listen to the station on the daily. While Hitz.fm does impart healthy PSAs on air, the radio station made a very huge boo-boo.
In a newly uploaded 22-second video on its Facebook page, two of its Morning Crew deejays Ryan De Alwis and Arnold Loh are seen checking out a woman. Ryan then approaches the woman to hit her up and as soon as she turns around, both the deejays start vomiting as she turned out to be a transgender.
Naturally, the transphobic video, which was captioned, “When a pretty girl turns out to be a guy. Have you ever been so startled that you feel like throwing up?”, enraged netizens everywhere, and was deemed as highly discriminatory. That said, the video has since been removed and Hitz.fm also issued an apology.
“We at Hitz would like to apologise for the said video, and have since removed it. Thank you,” the radio station mentioned. The video has also drawn the attention of transgender rights advocate Nisha Ayub, who received the International Woman of Courage Award in 2016.
She wrote on her Facebook page, “Shame on you Hitz Fm. Are you guys transphobia (sic)? Are you guys encouraging bullying and hatred to people that has different gender identity or expression.” She added, “But yet we have media that actually perpetuate such degrading messages of the community to the general public.”
Damn, this is gonna be a tough one to get out of.
