- 6/21/2025
When live television goes wrong, careers can end in an instant. Join us as we explore the most jaw-dropping moments when news professionals lost everything while on camera. From inappropriate jokes and fabricated stories to on-air meltdowns and ethical violations, these broadcasting blunders changed lives forever.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00So let's not say goodbye, but till we meet again.
00:03Welcome to WatchMojo.
00:05And today we're counting down our picks for the most humiliating times news reporters lost everything while on air.
00:12This whole talk about age makes me uncomfortable.
00:15I think that, I think it's the wrong road to go down.
00:19Number 10, Angel Cardenas.
00:21So no one is out here to tell me which car can, I can't go in because you know some of these are off limits.
00:26So I'm just gonna, I'm gonna live on the wild side.
00:28Tell me what you think about this pose right here, Tina.
00:32Sacramento reporter Angel Cardenas was getting the lowdown on an upcoming classic car show when, after noticing that he was alone in a room full of beautiful cars, he decided to make himself right at home, climbing on one car and possibly denting another.
00:45What year is this thing? I think it's a 1950, 99, yeah right.
00:51Oh, oh, oh, I hit that other car.
00:54Oh no.
00:55Angel.
00:55Cardenas was fired, obviously, but we can't help but wonder if he wanted to be fired the whole time acting like this.
01:02Like the dude didn't even tuck his shirt in before going live on TV.
01:06He was either trying too hard or not trying enough.
01:09I would get off that now.
01:12Oh.
01:13Oh no, he told me to get off.
01:14Okay, I'm gonna get in trouble.
01:15Back to you guys.
01:16Bye.
01:17Number 9.
01:18Natasha Axelby.
01:20While you might not know her name, you may have seen her viral clip.
01:23Natasha Axelby is a journalist who once worked for ABC Australia News.
01:28During one live show, the camera cut back to her while she was mindlessly playing with her pen.
01:34Now to sport with Meredith Sheehan.
01:36Axelby quickly realized her error with a big reaction and immediately went to segue into the next segment.
01:43While the clip was widely shared on social media as a funny clip, it was no laughing matter for Axelby.
01:48Since she was freelancing at the time, ABC Australia chose not to offer additional on-air shifts.
01:55Axelby's treatment after the pen incident earned her more support than jeers from her industry peers.
02:01Number 8.
02:02AJ Clemente.
02:04Filed this one under, so funny he should have kept his job.
02:08Rookie newscaster Clemente was on his first day at the anchor desk and super stressed when he dropped an F-bomb just as the show was going live.
02:16And the rest is viral video infamy.
02:19It was so popular that AJ even did a media tour talking about the epic gaffe.
02:23Because you're man enough to face the music, you've been on this show, you've been on a lot of shows,
02:27you've been on the Twitter and the Face Feed and all of that stuff.
02:31If you want to, you should be offered that job back.
02:35And while we understand why AJ couldn't have kept his job in live TV after such a careless mistake,
02:42we're still laughing at this video all these years later.
02:45And seeing as this single video has brought us so much joy,
02:48we really hope AJ landed on his feet after being canned and is enjoying a happy, healthy life.
02:55Are we live?
02:56Yeah, we're live.
02:57FYI.
02:58I know that's your favorite form of TV.
03:01Number 7.
03:02Tex Antoine.
03:03Hello, I'm Tex Antoine.
03:05And I'd like to talk to you about the best way to feed your dog.
03:07Even without formal training in meteorology, Antoine became a fixture in local U.S. weather reporting for decades.
03:15He was known for meshing entertainment into his reports.
03:18However, in 1976, Antoine's storied career came crashing down.
03:24While working for WABC, he made a highly insensitive joke about assault right after a harrowing news story about a child being assaulted aired.
03:33Soon, the station was flooded with complaints from viewers, and WABC suspended Antoine.
03:40Although many people called for his firing, the network eventually brought him back in a non-TV role.
03:45However, when Antoine's contract expired in 1977, WABC chose not to renew it.
03:52He later found brief work at a different station before passing away in 1983.
03:57Number 6.
03:59Chris Cuomo.
03:59What I'm saying is, you have these employers, the agro companies, the other big manufacturers, they take them in because it's cheap labor.
04:07And they get away with it all the time.
04:08After moving to CNN and getting his own show in 2018, everything seemed to be going well for Chris Cuomo.
04:15When his brother Andrew, the governor of New York, was accused of harassment, Cuomo seemingly did the right thing by publicly stating he wouldn't discuss the story due to a conflict of interest.
04:25I said point blank, I can't be objective when it comes to my family.
04:29So I never reported on the scandal.
04:32And when it happened, I tried to be there for my brother.
04:35Yet behind the scenes, it was apparently another matter.
04:38In 2021, it was discovered that Cuomo had used his connections and experience to advise Andrew on his response.
04:45And he'd collected information on the accusers.
04:47This horrific breach of journalistic ethics caused CNN to suspend Cuomo.
04:53This, on top of assault allegations against Cuomo himself, caused the network to ultimately fire its former prized host.
05:01Now having to deal with something I haven't had to deal with in so many years, which is, now what?
05:09Number 5, Dan Rather.
05:12When it comes to iconic names in news, it doesn't get much bigger than Dan Rather.
05:17He anchored CBS Evening News for over two decades and won eight Peabody's.
05:22Unfortunately, his legendary career was overshadowed by an incident in the mid-2000s.
05:27In 2004, Rather reported on the Killian documents.
05:32These memos were supposed to be official proof that George W. Bush had a rocky stint as a member of the Texas Air National Guard.
05:39We also presented documents for the first time, which indicated that once Mr. Bush was accepted into the Guard,
05:45he failed to live up to the requirements of his service, including following an order.
05:49However, it was quickly revealed that these memos were a modern forgery.
05:53The affair severely tarnished Rather's reputation with the network.
05:57Those were facts and that was true.
06:00Because it was true, those who wanted to discredit the story had to attack the process by which we got to the truth.
06:07And they successfully attacked us on that.
06:10After retiring as an anchorman, he was fired from CBS entirely.
06:15While he went on to other ventures, his career with the big network was seemingly damaged beyond repair.
06:21Number 4, Lara Logan.
06:23For a while, South African journalist Lara Logan had a good career and even served as chief foreign affairs correspondent for CBS.
06:32But everything collapsed on October 27, 2013, when she appeared on 60 Minutes to report on the 2012 Benghazi attack.
06:40Logan's report was riddled with factual errors.
06:43After the incident, she apologized on CBS This Morning for her shoddy journalism and blamed an inaccurate source in the U.S. embassy in Benghazi.
06:52The most important thing to every person at 60 Minutes is the truth.
06:57And today, the truth is that we made a mistake.
07:00And that's very disappointing for any journalist.
07:04It's very disappointing for me.
07:05She was forced to take a leave of absence and later left CBS entirely.
07:10Logan then fell into far-right beliefs and started speaking publicly about various conspiracy theories.
07:16She also landed a job at Fox News, but she was fired by them as well in 2022.
07:23Number 3, Chris Matthews.
07:25The man in the White House is behaving now like a character on that old detective show, Columbo.
07:32He's acting like one of the bad guys.
07:33Best known for his political roundtable show, Hardball with Chris Matthews, that launched in 1997,
07:39this host's involvement in politics and journalism actually goes back decades.
07:43So after a long career in the public eye, Matthews was already at the point of contemplating retirement.
07:49But a bizarre rant likening Bernie Sanders' Nevada caucus win to the Nazi invasion of France brought on his retirement much sooner than planned.
07:57I'm reading last night about the fall of France in the summer of 1940, and the general, Renaud, calls up Churchill and says,
08:04it's over.
08:06And Churchill said, how can it be?
08:07You've got the greatest army in Europe.
08:09How can it be over?
08:10He said, it's over.
08:11His comments sparked calls for resignation and coincided with a new column published about inappropriate comments
08:18he'd allegedly made towards journalist Laura Bassett.
08:21Facing the fire from two fronts, Matthews met with his bosses at MSNBC and later resigned on air after offering apologies for his behavior.
08:30Compliments on a woman's appearance that some men, including me, might have once incorrectly thought were okay.
08:37We're never okay.
08:38Not then and certainly not today.
08:39And for making such comments in the past, I'm sorry.
08:42Number two, Don Lemon.
08:44Journalist Don Lemon had been steadily working in news since 2006 when he joined CNN as a correspondent.
08:52But at certain points in his career, he drew criticism for his negative opinions about women.
08:57Everything came to a head on February 19th, 2023.
09:01On that day, Lemon criticized politician Nikki Haley by saying, quote,
09:05A woman is considered to be in her prime in her 20s and 30s and maybe 40s.
09:11What are you talking about?
09:12That's not according to me.
09:13Prime for what?
09:14It depends.
09:15I mean, it's just like prime.
09:16If you look it up, it'll say, if you look, if you Google when is a woman in her prime, it'll say 20s, 30s and 40s.
09:22This comment earned Lemon widespread condemnation.
09:25He apologized, but the damage was done.
09:28It also sparked a report from Variety, which showcased his history of misogynistic behavior.
09:33He was subsequently fired on April 24th, 2023.
09:37Before we continue, be sure to subscribe to our channel and ring the bell to get notified about our latest videos.
09:44You have the option to be notified for occasional videos or all of them.
09:48If you're on your phone, make sure you go into your settings and switch on notifications.
09:52I did not set out to in any way change the chronicle of what happened to us.
10:04With the news industry in such a precarious place in the era of social media over the past decade,
10:09finding out that respected newsman Brian Williams lied in order to make his reporting sound more heroic came as an epic letdown in 2015.
10:17On the ground, we learned the Chinook ahead of us was almost blown out of the sky.
10:23That hole was made by a rocket propelled grenade or RPG fired from the ground.
10:30Williams made up a story about him being on a helicopter that came under fire in Iraq in 2003.
10:35And the public and professional outburst when it was revealed this wasn't true forced NBC to suspend him for six months without pay.
10:43I made a mistake in recalling the events of 12 years ago.
10:47It did not take long to hear from some brave men and women in the air crews who were also in that desert.
10:54I want to apologize.
10:55After so many years at the helm of NBC's flagship news show and NBC Nightly News,
11:01Williams' fabrications led to his demotion to MSNBC, where he remained until his retirement in 2021.
11:09Have you ever caught a live reporting flub while watching the news?
11:12Let us know in the comments.
11:14This was a bungled attempt by me to thank one special veteran and by extension, our brave military men and women.
Recommended
7:14
|
Up next
9:53
1:58:59
17:59
24:53
27:57
13:21
33:10
50:25