Ojinika Obiekwe, an Emmy Award-winning Black journalist, has filed a lawsuit against PIX11 for allegedly treating her like a “slave on a plantation” and wrongfully firing her for speaking out against the pervasive racial discrimination in their newsroom. The lawsuit against the New York-based TV channel lists that she is seeking unspecified damages.
Obiekwe also points out the alleged racial discrimination she felt she experienced at PIX11 in the newsroom. She would say at work, “All that’s left for me to do at this point is pick cotton.”
According to The New York Post, she explained that she received a disproportionately heavy workload and less support than her white counterparts.
The 46-year-old Nigerian-born journalist, who worked at the PIX11 news station for over 20 years, claimed she was forced to do the job of two or three people with little support.
After receiving a promotion in 2017, Obiekwe said she noticed two white men, particularly who had the same role as her at sister stations, “were receiving more and better staffing support” and had less work.
According to the lawsuit, Obiekwe said of the station, “This might as well be a plantation.”
Obiekwe stated that as an entertainment anchor and reporter, she also completed tasks usually given to a segment producer or copy editor. With the added work, the two white men still allegedly earned a higher salary than she did.
She said she was vocal about the mistreatment she felt she received at work, and it escalated in 2020.
“Just call me Django. But even Django was unchained,” she would say at PIX11. “I thought slavery was abolished.”
The next year Obiekwe submitted a formal complaint to PIX11 Nexstar’s human resources department and finally had a meeting with Nicole Tindiglia, who was the channel’s news director. Although Tindiglia claimed she would look into Obiekwe’s grievances, she allegedly never did, according to the lawsuit.
Instead, in 2022 Tindiglia called a meeting with Obiekwe and allegedly told her that her constant race rhetoric was “making people uncomfortable.”
Tindiglia then fired Obiekwe in January of the next year for “failing to perform job duties and insubordination,” the lawsuit states.
Obiekwe’s lawsuit claims that the firing was retaliation for her speaking out against the racial discrimination in PIX11’s practices, and her SAG-AFTRA union lawyers have claimed that the that the news anchor’s former employers have failed to provide proof of Obiekwe failing to perform her job duties.
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