Rick Sanchez Tells Mediaite: “I Got Greedy And I Got Mad And I Got In Trouble”

Q&A

by Steve Krakauer | 2:00 pm, October 8th, 2010

» 23 comments

Mediaite: You talk about the vitriol on either side. Let me ask you about Keith Olbermann, I don’t know if you saw his segment, who came out saying he didn’t think your apology was enough, for saying anyone who “may” be offended. Last week you had him on the “List U Don’t Want 2 Be On.” What do you think of Keith’s reaction and what he does with his show?

Sanchez: I think he’s got a fine point there. The “may be offended” – I think he’s right. I need to apologize because I offended people, not because I may have offended people. So to Keith’s point, he’s right. Other than that Keith is no different than the guys on Fox News. Same thing. He’s on the left and he’s going to attack anybody who is even close to being on the right. Just like the guys on the right are going to attack anybody who is close to being on the left. And I just don’t like that. I don’t like what we’re going through in this country right now. If that’s where the business is going, I’m not sure I want to be a part of the business.

“I like doing a new media, a media that’s never been done before. And I was pioneering it and I was doing so well. But I wanted more, and I got greedy and I got mad and I got in trouble.”

Mediaite: One of the people who really had your back for years was Jon Klein. Even looking back to who got you on Twitter, which obviously became a big part of your show. He left the Friday before you. What do you think of Klein’s time at CNN, and do you think if he was there last Friday you’d still be there?

Sanchez: Oh gosh, I don’t know. I love Jon Klein. Brilliant, brilliant man who did wonderful things for my career, in more ways than you could ever imagine. And, I can’t speculate. But I also think Ken Jautz is great. I love Ken Jautz. He’s been a friend for many years. And he and I had some big plans, that it now looks like aren’t going to come true.

Mediaite: I want to talk about what’s next, but immediately, people need you back on Twitter. Are you changing the handle and coming back?

Sanchez: @RicksBook. I’ll be tweeting there tonight as a matter of fact. I’m excited about that.

Mediaite: Well @RickSanchezCNN has 140,000 followers. Will they be able to transfer over to another account?

Sanchez: Hopefully we’ll be able to transfer them over to @RicksBook, which is what we’re going to call it. We’ve got the book out, we figure we might as well. The one thing I’m promoting, the one thing that I represent now, other than my own stupidity, is the fact that I’ve written this book. Where I even talk about a lot of the things I’m now embroiled in. I’ve kind of committed the very sins that I describe in the book, because I wasn’t careful enough.

Mediaite: So what’s next?

Sanchez: The thing is to get out there and talk to people. And just be honest and forthright as I possibly can. Then I need to start thinking about what I want to do. The good thing is, I can still look at myself in the mirror. And I can sit down and have this conversation with you, and be real honest. I have nothing to hide. I didn’t rob a bank, there’s nothing out there. You know everything. This whole scandal is a conversation I had on a day when I was very tired and said some things I shouldn’t have said. That’s the beginning and end of it. I don’t feel like I’ve disrespected my wife, or my family, or my God or my children in any way. That’s a big deal. That empowers you. Do I get scared? Yeah I wake up in the middle of the night scared that no one’s going to want to hire me again. And I love this business and I love telling stories and I love doing it differently than anyone else has ever done it before. And I like breaking rules, and being unconventional. And I like doing a new media, a media that’s never been done before. And I was pioneering it and I was doing so well. But I wanted more, and I got greedy and I got mad and I got in trouble.

Mediaite: That passion comes across.

Sanchez: I just want a chance to communicate with people once again. Because I love it. I love crafting the information. I love crafting the newscasts. I love winning. I mean, if you look at our record we were doing a pretty good show for a bunch of little kids there putting together that 8 o’clock show. [whispers] I mean, if you look at now… It’s like, the last night there we did 250,000 in the book. That’s a pretty good nut for a temporary fill in.

Mediaite: Have you gotten a chance to see Parker Spitzer?

Sanchez: I haven’t. I’ve been too caught up in my own thing to get a chance to look at it. I met [Eliot Spitzer], though, before I left. I just went in there and shook his hand and he seems like a nice guy. Really smart guy. I mean, does smart guy translate to television?…(Commanding the camera) takes a little while. Even when you think you own it, you screw up!

Mediaite: I think your legacy is the way you revolutionized the way that social media has been incorporated into television. Not everyone across the board does it the way you do, but almost everyone now incorporates social media in some way into their newscast. What do you think of that, and your legacy?

Sanchez: It makes me proud. If I was to get hit by a bus tomorrow, my children could go to the Newseum in Washington D.C. and see their dad’s picture there as the pioneer of social media and its marriage with mainstream media. And that’s pretty cool. It means at least I had some kind of effect. All this other stuff about what I said or what I didn’t say, I think in the long run, if I’m earnest and honest and do my due diligence and atone, I think that will pass. Maybe somebody will give me a chance to keep doing it.

(This has been edited for length and clarity.)

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CNN, Jon Klein, keith olbermann, rick sanchez

Big Eddie

There may not be many Indians or Orientals on Univision , either , Rick . Time to protest ?
http://www.facebook.com/people/Shawn-Soya/1088592828 Shawn Soya

That was a nice interview, and it definitely shows his “human side”.
Good luck to him.
LibertySister

If he is looking for a new job he should stop criticizing CNN, John Stewart, Fox news and stop throwing in Race to be a victim why his numbers were low and why John Stewart was making fun of his stupid antics..
http://www.facebook.com/people/Dronetek-Bulk-Vanderhuge/100000918732763 Dronetek Bulk Vanderhuge

His perception of the different media camps is way off in my opinion. Hes a big part of the problem, but somehow sees himself as above the fray. Something we tend to see from a lot of people on the left.
Greg

Big Eddie said:
There may not be many Indians or Orientals on Univision , either , Rick . Time to protest ?

Nor does Goya sell cold borscht but perhaps you are right and a letter to Haim Saban is due…
http://politicsofdestruction.com/ Bobomatic

I realize you guys have to report this stuff, but in the end… he wasn’t relevant before and even less relevant now.
Michael Santomauro

Most of us are mentally trapped to think Jewish. Actually, it is safe to say that virtually every mainstream publication or or other type of media organ is “nothing more than a screen to present chosen views.” The great battle over the last century has been a battle for the mind of the Western peoples, i.e., non-Jewish Euros. The chosen won it by acquiring control over essentially the complete mainstream news, information, education and entertainment media of every type, and using that control to infuse and disseminate their message, agenda and worldview, their way of thinking, or rather the way they want us to think. Since at least the 1960s this campaign has been effectively complete. Since then they have shaped and controlled the minds of all but a seeming few of us in varying degree with almost no opposition or competition from any alternative worldview. So now most of us are mentally trapped in the box the chosen have made for us, which we have lived in all our lives. Only a few have managed to avoid it or escape it, or to even sometimes see outside of it, and so actually “think outside of the (Jewish) box.”

What happened to Oliver Stone is a good case study. The Wall Street Journal reported this past summer that Stone said that “public opinion was focused on the Holocaust because of ‘Jewish domination of the media.’” Stone also said that the Jews “stay on top of every comment, the most powerful lobby in Washington. Israel has f—– up United States foreign policy for years.”

Like so many others before him, Stone groveled: “In trying to make a broader historical point about the range of atrocities the Germans committed against many people, I made a clumsy association about the Holocaust, for which I am sorry and I regret. Jews obviously do not control media or any other industry.”

Joe Sobran who died this past week had this to say about Jewish media power:

“Jewish control of the major media in the media age makes the enforced silence both paradoxical and paralyzing. Survival in public life requires that you know all about it, but never refer to it. A hypocritical etiquette forces us to pretend that the Jews are powerless victims; and if you don’t respect their victimhood, they’ll destroy you. It’s a phenomenal display not of wickedness, really, but of fierce ethnocentrism, a sort of furtive racial superpatriotism.”

In 1996, reprinted in the May 27th issue of the New York Times, by Ari Shavit, an Israeli columnist describing his feelings on the killings of a hundred civilians in a military skirmish in southern Lebanon. Shavit wrote:

“We killed them out of a certain naive hubris. Believing with absolute certitude that now, with the White House, the Senate, and much of the American media in our hands, the lives of others do not count as much as our own.”

Peace.
Michael Santomauro
ReporterNotebook@gmail.com

PS: An antisemite condemns people for being Jews, I am not an antisemite.
Puter Boi

“If I was to get hit by a bus tomorrow”

Kind of an unfortunate turn of phrase coming from a guy who actually did run someone down, huh?

I hope Krak took a shower after this interview…it sounds like there may have been some hugging going on.
http://glassbead.info Magister

Good interview and congratulations, Steve.
And is it a bit telling, even Sanchez hasn’t watched Spitzer?
The Real Royal King

I think Rick needs to hire the agency which made those great ads for Randi the Witch.

“Hi! I’m Rick Sanchez.

I am not an Anti-Semite.

I am you.”

But say “you” in that wonderful Hispano-Anglaise accent in which it becomes “Jew.”
Cecelia

Rick, come here, baby… let mama make it all better.
http://twitter.com/pewestlake Paul Westlake

Dronetek Bulk Vanderhuge said:
His perception of the different media camps is way off in my opinion. Hes a big part of the problem, but somehow sees himself as above the fray. Something we tend to see from a lot of people on the left.

And just about everyone on the right.
http://twitter.com/pewestlake Paul Westlake

Bobomatic said:
I realize you guys have to report this stuff, but in the end… he wasn’t relevant before and even less relevant now.

“…because anything outside of my direct personal experiences and desires is irrelevant.”

Got it.
http://twitter.com/pewestlake Paul Westlake

The Real Royal King said:
I think Rick needs to hire the agency which made those great ads for Randi the Witch.

“Hi! I’m Rick Sanchez.

I am not an Anti-Semite.

I am you.”

But say “you” in that wonderful Hispano-Anglaise accent in which it becomes “Jew.”

You get a “groan” for that one. ;-)
VRWC Destruction Machine

The Real Royal King said:
I think Rick needs to hire the agency which made those great ads for Randi the Witch.

“Hi! I’m Rick Sanchez.

I am not an Anti-Semite.

I am you.”

Ricky needs to use the agency that hired Meg Whitman’s maid.

But say “you” in that wonderful Hispano-Anglaise accent in which it becomes “Jew.”
VRWC Destruction Machine

The Real Royal King said:
I think Rick needs to hire the agency which made those great ads for Randi the Witch.

Ricky needs to use the agency that hired Meg Whitman’s maid.
ChrisNH

The most enraged and angry media hacks out there today are LIBERAL ones. Now, why would that be? They have the government of their dreams in place…and they’re MAD. Practically every Lib media hack out there is a step or two away from being ‘Rick Sanchez.’ It can only be because these media people pushed the ‘joys’ of Liberalism on us…and we all saw Liberalism to be one great big LIE. They are complicit, and they know we know.
http://twitter.com/pewestlake Paul Westlake

ChrisNH said:
The most enraged and angry media hacks out there today are LIBERAL ones. Now, why would that be? They have the government of their dreams in place…and they’re MAD. Practically every Lib media hack out there is a step or two away from being ‘Rick Sanchez.’ It can only be because these media people pushed the ‘joys’ of Liberalism on us…and we all saw Liberalism to be one great big LIE. They are complicit, and they know we know.

Prove it.
ActaNonVerba

American Jews make up only 2% of the population of America. Yet: 46% make over $100,000 per year, they make up 15% of the U.S. Senate, 13% of the U.S. House of Representatives, 67% of members of the Board of the Federal reserve, 33% of the U.S. Supreme Court. Media: Just taking CNN only, 55% of corporate officers for TBS, which owns CNN, are Jewish. On air, Larry King, John King, Howard Kurtz, Eliot Slpitzer, Jeffrey Toobin, Paula Zahn, etc.. Rick Sanchez has nothing to apologize for.
Harry Shearer

Sorry, Rick, that spot in the Newseum will be taken up by “Talkback Live”, CNN’s much earlier attempt to wrap a news program with a shiny covering of email and phone (and live audience) feedback. At the end of the day, both broadcasts left me with the same feeling–who cares what these people think, I tuned in to find out the news. Maybe that spot will be the Viewzeum next door.
http://twitter.com/pewestlake Paul Westlake

Harry Shearer said:
Sorry, Rick, that spot in the Newseum will be taken up by “Talkback Live”, CNN’s much earlier attempt to wrap a news program with a shiny covering of email and phone (and live audience) feedback. At the end of the day, both broadcasts left me with the same feeling–who cares what these people think, I tuned in to find out the news. Maybe that spot will be the Viewzeum next door.

That’s true. TBL was CNN’s original ground-breaker town hall show. I was a moderator for TBL on the CompuServe service back then… and the righties were just as nasty and ignorant back then as they are on these boards today. Though I admit I had to eject my own brother for calling someone a “Bible Nazi” once. Oops! ;-)
http://Mediaite.com uggugg

CNN should give Rick Sanchez his job back. The only person that doesn’t make a mistake is a person that never does anything. He is young energetic, intelligent and humble in all the viewings I have seen. He has a lot of miles left on him and I’m sure he will get better with age. His qualities are honesty, sincerity, he also has go power, and did I mention he has a lot of miles left on him. CNN, think about it. I don’t think Fox likes him that is another reason he must be a keeper
http://www.facebook.com/people/Bk-Thirumalai/1252537052 Bk Thirumalai

Dont take back rick – you nailed the undercurrent of the decline of American Imperialism.