As I have noted in several posts, I expected that fired CNN anchor Rick Sanchez would eventually make his way back to a “big time” media job if he fully explained his comments and apologized in a way that convinced most people. He seemed to recently have earned Jon Stewart’s partial sympathy, but was blasted by Keith Olbermann for not apologizing in a way without any seeming hedge words.
But the latest is that he’ll be on “Good Morning America” tomorrow– a program where he’ll be interviewed in a more typical journalistic fashion than if he had appeared on an ideological news show on Fox or MSNBC. There is a path towards rehabilitation in the United States after people in the public eye either shove their feet in their mouth or behave poorly. Some can do travel it…some try and fail. Can Sanchez manage to put the anti-semitic comments he made that got him fired behind him once and for all?
My prediction holds: Sanchez’s career is not over in terms of being a national media figure — although he may not reach the heights he was starting to reach at CNN, Jon Stewart’s comedy notwithstanding.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.