Disney Hit With 2nd Suit Over Radio Promo : Entertainment: Another KLOS employee alleges harassment in wake of campaign. Hosts apologize as groups call for stronger action.

Walt Disney Co. was hit Thursday with a second racial-discrimination lawsuit stemming from its role in a radio promotion called “The Black Hoe.”

The move comes as the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Chicago-based Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and the Baltimore-based National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People joined a throng of civil rights groups in condemning Disney for allowing the promotion to be aired on “The Mark & Brian Show” on its KLOS-FM station. The Congress of Racial Equality sent a letter Thursday to the Federal Communications Commission asking the government to revoke KLOS’ license.

On Wednesday, several hours before a small group of protesters gathered to picket Disneyland, KLOS deejays Mark Thompson and Brian Phelps publicly apologized for the promotion during their morning talk show.

“We never intended to hurt anyone,” said the talk show hosts, who were on vacation last week when Disney’s ABC division issued a written apology, referring to the promotion as inappropriate and unacceptable. “It’s not what the show is about. We now know people were offended and hurt by this and we sincerely apologize.”

Early in the deejays’ careers, an Alabama radio station issued an apology after an African American sportscaster sued them over alleged disparaging racial remarks made on their show.

Thompson and Phelps declined to comment Thursday, referring calls to ABC’s legal department. ABC attorney Julie Hoover also declined to comment, saying the company had not seen a copy of the latest lawsuit.

The Rev. Jamal-Harrison Bryant, national youth director for the NAACP, said Disney needs to do more than apologize.

“I guess it’s a racist world after all,” Bryant said in an interview from Baltimore. “It’s sorrowful that the civil rights community had to plead for an apology with Disney, a company that presents itself as a reservoir of family values. The deejays who put on this racist promotion should have been taken off the air immediately. I think they still need to be taken off the air.”

Disney was sued in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Thursday by KLOS Account Executive Carla Woodson, the second black employee to allege that she was retaliated against for complaining about the promotion. Woodson is represented by James R. DeBose, the same Los Angeles attorney who filed suit Aug. 6 on behalf of KLOS Traffic Manager Judy Goodwin.

The suits by both women contend that Disney, ABC and KLOS violated antidiscrimination laws by airing the “racist and sexually degrading” promotion, during which “Black Hoes”--black plastic gardening tools--were distributed to listeners and advertisers. Both women also contend that they have suffered daily harassment and retaliation by managers and co-workers since complaining about the promotion.

ABC last week said there was no basis to the claims made in Goodwin’s suit and that the station “intends to vigorously defend itself.” ABC reiterated this week that the corporation has already disciplined those who were directly responsible for the promotion.

Sources this week said KLOS General Manager William Sommers dismissed the station’s program director, John Duncan, last year, holding him responsible for the promotion.

Duncan declined to comment, but his attorney, Peter Paterno, said: “John Duncan, or any program director at a major station for that matter, is not responsible for approving on-air promotional giveaways. That is not his job.”

Woodson’s suit contends that Disney has not disciplined any of the senior managers involved in approving, budgeting and monitoring the campaign. To the contrary, the suit says, several of those KLOS executives--including Sommers--have since been promoted.

According to the suit, Robert Koontz, formerly sales manager at KLOS, was promoted to director of sales. Leonard Madrid, formerly local sales director at KLOS, was elevated to general sales manager. And Louis Chelekis, the former KLOS national sales manager whose name appears on printed material accompanying “Black Hoe” orders, now works as local sales manager at KABC and KDIS Disney Radio, a family-oriented station.

Thompson and Phelps, who continue to broadcast daily on KLOS, sparked a controversy 13 years ago on WAPI-FM, the station in Birmingham, Ala., where they established themselves as provocative morning talk show hosts.

The duo and another deejay were sued in 1986 by black sportscaster Gil Tyree, who accused them of making false and malicious statements on the air about him. According to the suit, the deejays had engaged in a pattern of making “libelous and slanderous statements which are racist, sexist, vulgar and obscene.”

The suit says WAPI broadcast a retraction that apologized to Tyree for the comments, calling them in “poor taste” and saying they were meant to be humorous.

Tyree’s suit was settled out of court before going to trial. Tyree could not be reached and his attorney, J. Gusty Yearout, declined to comment, saying the settlement contained a confidentiality clause.

Representatives for several civil rights organizations said Thursday that they want Disney to take more substantial steps to prevent a reoccurrence.

“If the allegations in these lawsuits are proved true, I think Disney, ABC and KLOS have some serious housecleaning that needs to take place,” said Tracy Rice, the Los Angeles bureau chief of Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. “The real key in lawsuits like these is to put in place a series of systemic changes to avert this kind of an incident in the future.

“What you really want to see is big changes made from the top down so that this can never ever happen to anyone else who is employed by them again,” Rice said.