A Mississippi morning news anchor appears to be out of a job after saying a preferred Snoop Dogg phrase on air earlier this month.
Barbie Bassett has not returned to the anchor desk at NBC affiliate WLBT because the March 8 broadcast and is not any longer listed as a member of the news team on the station’s website, the Clarion Ledger reports.
The Post reached out to Bassett, WLBT and Snoop Dogg for comment.
“As I’m sure you’ll be able to understand, WLBT is unable to comment on personnel matters,” Ted Fortenberry, the station’s regional vp and general manager, told The Post in an emailed statement Saturday.
The gaffe was made during a discussion about Snoop Dogg’s latest addition to his Cali wine line.
Bassett said, “Fo shizzle, my nizzle,” when the concept of a Snoop collaboration with a newsroom journalist was raised.
“Nizzle” is slang for the N-word. Bassett, who’s white, also tweeted the phrase in 2011.
This shouldn’t be the primary time Bassett, who boasts being the primary chief meteorologist in WLBT’s history, has landed in hot water for her comments.
The Mississippi native apologized in October 2022 after referencing a black reporter’s “grandmammy” on air.
“Though not intentional, I now understand how my comment was each insensitive and hurtful. I actually have apologized to Carmen Poe,” Bassett said about her colleague. “Now, I would really like to apologize to you. That shouldn’t be the center of who I’m. And for that, I humbly ask to your forgiveness and I apologize to everyone I actually have offended.”
She continued: “I’ll learn from this and take part in training so I can higher understand our history and our people. I can’t mend the hurt my comment caused. I pray you’ll forgive me and that you just’ll extend grace through this awful mistake.”
Her latest slip-up drew the eye of Charlamagne tha God, who defended her this week on the radio.
“I don’t think she must have been fired for that,” he said on “The Breakfast Club.” “She won’t even know what ‘nizzle’ means, yo. Come on, like stop. That’s not a reason to fireside that woman.”
Some social media users have come to Bassett’s defense, while others say it’s not appropriate for a white woman to say that phrase.
Bassett graduated from Mississippi College in 1993 and earned a Master of Science degree from Mississippi State University with a concentration in broadcast meteorology, in response to her online resume.
“In some ways, Barbie Bassett’s story is Mississippi’s story,” then-Gov. Haley Barbour said in 2010 of Bassett, who has three children, Grace, Will Christian, and Lilly Faith.
“It’s about faith and perseverance coping with hardships we don’t at all times understand on the time and finding the answers by working through the issues.”
