Will Rob Morrison Get Hired at Another TV Station?
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TV people have been arrested and even convicted of felonies and yet they manage to still work in the business.
In Philly, KYW Anchor Larry Mendte was arrested and convicted of hacking into his co-anchor's email account. He now works at WPIX in New York.
Rob Morrison has been arrested and now has "resigned" from his job. What are his chances of working in TV news once again?
The NY Daily News says that if history is a guide, we’re unlikely to see Rob Morrison on New York television again.
The former WNBC Ch. 4 and WCBS Ch. 2 news anchor resigned Wednesday in the wake of his arrest for domestic violence.
“He’s going to have a very hard time getting back into television, and if he does, it will be far away from New York,” says Dr. Richard Hanley, associate professor of journalism at Quinnipiac College. “These are charges of a violent nature, plus you have police records of prior calls to his house.
“It’s all just too much. It’s an intractable situation.”
Morrison joins a small, but well-chronicled group of New York television personalities who have been arrested on charges that made sensational headlines — though the disposition wasn’t always so grim.
Dr. Marvell Scott, a former weekend sports anchor on WABC/Ch. 7, was charged in February 2010 with raping a 14-year-old runaway girl in his apartment.
Scott claimed he was framed. He pleaded guilty in August 2010 to a misdemeanor and did 20 days of community service.
He has since returned to his city medical practice and told The News in 2010 he had no plans to find his way back to television.
Dominic Carter, a long-time New York 1 anchor, was convicted of attempted assault on his wife in 2009 and served three weeks in jail.
The conviction was overturned in 2011, by which time New York 1 let him go.
He now works for RNN television and maintains an active blog and website. He is often carried on the Huffington Post, where last year he wrote that Anthony Weiner will make a political comeback because “Americans are forgiving.”
Charles Leaf (pictured above), a former reporter at WNYW/Ch. 5, was fired after his arrest in October 2010 on charges of molesting his 4-year-old daughter.
A year later his wife posted a plea for help in clearing his name. She blamed a nanny for planting false suggestions.
Leaf has not been on TV since. Nor has Heidi Jones, the WABC/Ch. 7 meteorologist who pleaded guilty in December 2010 to filing false rape charges she thought would get the attention of her boyfriend.
Tom Taylor, editor of the newsletter “Tom Taylor Now,” says social media magnify the impact of high-profile cases these days.
“We follow cases them like chapters of a reality show,” he says. “We wait to see what happens next.”
Taylor notes that when a suspect is cleared, like WNYW/Ch. 5 anchor Greg Kelly after rape allegations in 2012, his life can return to normal.
But for anyone looking to hire Morrison, Hanley says, there may be just too much damage.
