Last week, WPIX/Channel 11 reporter Vince DeMentri was fired after a slapping incident involving the Bahamian UN ambassador's chauffeur. As a result, he joins a long line of historically dumb news anchors who got fired (or worse) for poor behavior.
In honor of DeMentri's flame-out, the News has compiled a list of some other notable local TV news personalities fails:
- CNN reporter Richard Quest was busted in 2008 in Central Park at 3:42 a.m. for methamphetamine possession. (He later entered drug rehab and has remained on CNN.)
- Anchor Steve Bartelstein was fired from WABC/Channel 7 in 2007 after snoozing in his office when he was supposed to be on the air. He also had shown up late for newscasts he was anchoring. Later that year he joined WCBS/Channel 2, only to resign last year, saying he felt "underappreciated."
- WCBS/Channel 2 weatherman Mark Danon was suspended without pay in 2000 after being busted on the Upper East Side for cocaine possession.
- WABC Weatherman Tex Antoine, a city fixture for three decades, was suspended in 1976, and fired the following year, after making a tasteless on-air joke about a news report of the rape of an 8-year-old girl.
- WCBS reporter Jim Jensen got in trouble in 1988 when he asked co-anchor Bree Walker, who had just given a report on early detection of birth defects, if her parents might have aborted her had they known in advance of her deformities. (A genetic condition caused Walker's toes and fingers to be fused together.)
- Anchorwoman Alycia Lane, 38, was fired in 2008 from Philadelphia's CBS affiliate after being accused of hitting an undercover police officer in New York. Her co-anchor in Philadelphia, Larry Mendte, pleaded guilty to a felony in late 2008 for obsessively hacking into Lane's e-mails and leaking private tidbits to the press. He served six months' home confinement and is on federal probation.
