Kirk Franklin Boycotting The Dove Awards

Source: Bennett Raglin / Getty

Kirk Franklin Boycotting The Dove Awards

Kirk Franklin might like to play around and hit a merciful Milly-Rock while onstage, but he’s DEAD serious about a recent censoring that occurred .

The gospel artist recently took home the Gospel Artist Of The Year award during the 50th annual Dove Awards. And while Kirk was accepting his award he made comments about the recent killing of Atatiana Jefferson and asked for prayers for her 8-year-old nephew who witnessed her murder at hands of an officer.

“A young girl by the name of Atatiana Jefferson was shot and killed in her home by a policeman and I am just asking that we send up prayers for her family and for his, and asking that we send up prayers for that 8-year-old little boy that saw that tragedy,” said Franklin.

Unfortunately and CONVENIENTLY, the comments were cut during the broadcast of the awards and now a perturbed Kirk is taking action.

“Not only did they edit my speech, they edited the African American experience,” said Franklin in an Instagram post announcing a boycott of The Dove Awards and Trinity Broadcast Netowrk (TBN), the network that airs them.

Billboard is also reporting that Kirk’s won this award three years in a row and previously discussed racial injustice in a speech that was AlSO edited from the TBN telecast.

The publication has a statement from Gospel Music Association president Jackie Patillo issuing an apology and claiming that the censorship was “unintentional.” She’s also adding that the unedited version available of Kirk’s speech is available on TBN’s on-demand platform.

A portion of it reads;

Due to our broadcast window, we had to significantly edit the Dove telecast to 2 hours, which aired Sunday, October 20th. In light of this, we understand that many were “disappointed because there were so many memorable moments and noteworthy portions of acceptance speeches absent.

Specifically, we were made aware of troubling concerns regarding the edit of Kirk Franklin’s acceptance speech. At the request of Kirk’s team, we held our response regarding those concerns until we were able to speak with Kirk privately, apologize directly, and discuss resolutions to rectify this unfortunate issue.

With that said, we would like to publicly acknowledge that we are deeply apologetic for the missteps that happened relating to the editing of Kirk Franklin’s Dove Awards acceptance speech. We accept the responsibility of our error. Although completely unintentional, we understand it caused great harm and deeply wounded many in the African American and Gospel community. As well, it left a general perception that we are not concerned with key social issues that affect people of color. It is not our intent to disregard or silence any of our artists, and we are deeply saddened by this perception and are committed to change this.”

Sure.

You can watch Kirk’s full unedited speech below.

Do YOU find it convenient that Kirk Franklin’s police brutality comments were edited out not once, but TWICE?