Radio announcer Gregg Whiteside, the voice of The New York Times -owned classical station WQXR, was fired this week in another political-correctness flap at the Gray Lady.
The station canned Whiteside — whose voice was synonymous with classical music in New York for 25 years — without notice or severance.
The station said the firing was "because of inappropriate comments which he admitted making."
Neither Whiteside nor the station would say exactly what those comments were.
[MusicalAmerica.com, citing station insiders, reports that the comments were "construed" as anti-Semitic by a passerby.]
"They've destroyed an innocent man," an emotional Whiteside told The Post yesterday. "I gave my life to that place. This wasn't a job for me — it was a way of life."
Whiteside says the trouble started two weeks ago when he made an off-the-air remark to 'QXR colleague Sam Hall that was overheard by someone who passed by the studio.
The station is located in the Times building on West 43rd Street — near the paper's newsroom.
"I believed I was having a private and confidential conversation with Sam Hall, who's even more like my brother than my own brother ... and that conversation might have leaked out into the newsroom," Whiteside says.
"I was speaking privately to a dear friend and it was not something that was on the air," he says, adding that he wasn't given the chance to apologize and told to leave Tuesday.
"I am in a state of utter depression and I'm devastated by this," he says. "To be fired with no severance? Are you kidding me?"
On a ship, in a prison, at the NYT -- you dummy up. Whiteside just learned that.