Day 3
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For the third night in a row, KSAZ Anchor Kari Lake was not on the air at the Fox O&O. Last night, Christina Carilla was filling in for Lake on the newscast.
Lake did appear in the 4PM newscast with a prerecorded “Life Hacks” segment and showed “how to separate two cups that are stuck together.” And you guys thought good investigative journalism was dead.
Apparently, Lake has been suspended after FTVLive did a story in which Lake dropped the F-bomb on a live stream that was being done from the studio.
Since FTVLive posted the story and the video, it has been viewed nearly 130,000 times.
The station has not made any comment as to Lake’s current status and neither Lake, nor KSAZ has apologized for the incident.
The Arizona Republic writes “the real culprit behind Kari Lake’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day wasn't the New Times or “the mainstream media.” It was an industry blog site, FTVLive.com. Which is basically one guy.”
They go onto say, “His name is Scott Jones, and he's a former TV reporter and news director. He launched FTVLive.com 19 years ago and still runs it as a one-man show, posting upward of two dozen items a day. The line between news and opinion is blurry, but it all has a "who's watching the watchers" feel to it.”
As we said, Lake, KSAZ nor Fox, which owns KSAZ has commented on Lake’s status, but sources tell FTVLIve that she has been suspended and will not be fired.
“How many chances are they going to give her?” asked one KSAZ staffer to FTVLive. “If this was any other station that had any integrity at all, she would have been gone a while ago,” said the employee.
Lake’s former co-workers are also not impressed with her, “I can assure you that Kari is one of the most unpleasant and unprofessional people in that building and she is disliked by many. I worked with her for several years and she was always bitter and hard to deal with. Constantly complaining about management or producers. She would brag about getting Botox or all her lavish vacations. Always wanted the attention on herself,” said the KSAZ staffer to FTVLive.
A news manager at another Fox O&O station says that if they was running KSAZ, “I would have fired her the minute I saw the video, but I think Doug is scared of her.” The Doug the manager is referring is KSAZ News Director Doug Bannard, who has been at the station nearly 30 years.
You would think that a news operation that relies on others talking would release some kind of statement about their main Anchor.
It is amazing how TV stations go silent when the story involves them.
At the very least, Kari Lake should at least say “sorry” for throwing down the F-bomb.
Stay tuned…
