Times News Anchors Were Wasted On Live TV

You'd think it'd be easy not to be trashed while at work. As far as we can see, it's a three-step process. Step 1: Show up at work. Step 2: Don't be trashed. Step 3: Don't get trashed. Easy, right? Well, apparently it's not too easy for certain respected news anchors, as though, out of all professions, no one would notice. Maybe it's the demands of the job and the pressure to perform flawlessly on live television. Maybe it's a latent desire for celebrity amongst those drawn to work in front of the camera. Then again, it was funny when CNN anchor Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen did shots of tequila live in front of the camera on New Year's Eve in 2017, so whatever. And in 2018. And 2019. And also in 2020, 2021, and 2023. And are planning on doing it again in 2024.

Okay, Cooper and Cohen weren't exactly what we would call "trashed." They were more loopy-tipsy-giggly. Plus, it was New Year's Eve. Other newscasters, though? They've been visibly hammered — or at least allegedly, because rarely will a newscaster or their employer be like, "Yeah, that dude was totally wankered." Sometimes on-air drunkenness is humorous or embarrassing, like in the case of CNN's Don Lemon. Sometimes it's confusing and a cause for concern, like in the recent case of CBS' Heather Kovar. And in some cases, it reflects a deeper, real problem with substance abuse that threatens far more than the coherence of a single, simple newscast, like in the case of KTVU's Frank Somerville. 

We'll start with a 2022 case of on-air drunkenness that made the news if only because folks wanted to poke fun and write headlines. And we should say "apparent" drunkenness because the newscaster in question — Heather Kovar of Schenectady, New York's WRGB CBS-6 — said that she was "sleep-deprived and exhausted" on the Saturday in question in July 2022, per the Daily Mail. She had just gotten back to work after time off following her father's death and was scheduled to work back to back shifts that weekend. Instead, she showed up on the air for the 6 p.m. Saturday broadcast, seemingly drunk.

Viewers took to X (formerly Twitter) during and after Kovar's broadcast to voice their opinions. Comments ranged from semi-sympathetic, "I hope Heather is ok on news channel 6, but she shouldn't be on TV she looks a wreck and she is slurring," to snarky, "That's what exactly a hot mess looks like." Adding to the muddle, former executive at NBC (and apparent gossip chaser) Mike Sington wrote a series of tweets updating people on Kovar's situation. He claimed a producer at CBS disclosed to him that Kovar often showed up at work "intoxicated," just never to the extent that it was noticeable on the air.

CBS suspended Kovar following the incident, and Kovar responded by choosing to not renew her contract with them when it expired on July 31. A bit later in early August, she went online to tell folks that she was okay, and that was that.

Just to remind folks that "Is this news anchor drunk?" tales aren't confined to the Anglosphere, let's turn our attention to India. Back in December 2021, veteran Hindi-language newscaster Deepak Chaurasia showed up at work apparently drunk when reporting on the death of Chief of Defense Staff General Bipin Rawat, who'd recently died in a completely preventable helicopter crash on December 8.  Video footage isn't super clear, but shows a blurry Chaurasia in the bottom-right of the screen mumbling a bit, clutching his head, and so forth. Per Free Press Journal, he also said that "a journalist" had died, not Rawat. The broadcast was quickly shut down in the middle of things. 

This was enough for a slew of articles and posts to crop up online, with one commenter on one Facebook post questioning why he wasn't arrested, and another posting the incident under #shameful. Following the incident, Chaurasia took to X, saying (via Google translate), "What you all are thinking after watching the video is completely not true." He then went on to explain (perhaps providing too many details) that he'd been dancing too much at a wedding at his house, inflamed an old knee injury, and then took a painkiller that made him loopy. Regardless, Chaurasia's career seems to have suffered little from the incident. He's since moved on to the reality TV show, "Bigg Boss OTT 3."

Things turn a bit serious in the case of newscaster Leon Harris of NBC4 Washington. Very recently on December 2, 2024, NBC4 Washington posted a brief announcement about Harris that stands in sympathetic contrast to other incidents in this article. It reads, "Last week, Leon appeared unwell while anchoring News4 at 6. Leon will be stepping away from the anchor desk to focus on health issues. We here at NBC4 — and you at home — care deeply about Leon and wish him well." On the newscast in question, dating to Thanksgiving, Harris had trouble keeping up with the teleprompter. The segment got cut short and quickly shifted to weather.

Harris has a history of alcohol abuse, to the point where he was arrested in 2022 for drunk driving and spent 10 days behind bars. Harris expressed deep remorse about the incident, as the Independent quotes. "In my condition, I could've killed someone ... I thought that after having about four glasses of wine, I thought I was good. I wasn't! Nobody's gonna be good after that." After getting back to the news desk, he said that he was "embracing sobriety" and collaborating with "very tough professionals to get control of this disease called alcoholism."

There's been no updates from Harris since NBC's announcement about him taking a break to focus on his health. And while it's not even 100% clear that Harris was drunk on the Thanksgiving broadcast in question, it's good that he's focusing on his health, regardless.

Now it's time to get even more serious by talking about Frank Somerville, who worked at San Francisco's KTVU FOX 2 until he showed up at work on May 30, 2021. During a 10 p.m. broadcast, he was slurring his words and mispronouncing vowels in an odd way. He was off the air until August when he came back for a brief stint to cover Gabby Petito's disappearance but got suspended for objecting to obsessive coverage of her story versus the disparities of reporting on missing women of color. To top it off, in between May and August he spent nine weeks in rehab after getting a DUI arrest and wrecking his car on the way to Taco Bell.

In a 2023 interview with KRON 4, Somerville said that he accidentally took two Ambien before going on the air in May, 2021 instead of his prescription medicine. He described himself as "a total mess" at the time. Speaking of alcohol and drug abuse, he said, "At the absolute worst, it would have been almost every night. What I was trying to do quite honestly, was just escape ... I was so sad and lonely from the divorce and missing my kids and the pandemic sure as hell didn't help because now, I was all alone."

Following this KRON 4 interview, Somerville got arrested twice on two back-to-back nights in June 2023, first for getting into a fight and then for showing "objective signs and symptoms of public intoxication," per KRON 4. In December that year, he showed up on Instagram shirtless describing his new love for exercise and sobriety.

After riding a depressive carousel of self-destructive news anchor behavior we might as well end on a funny note and go back to one of Anderson Cooper's former co-workers: Don Lemon. And by "funny" we mean a perfect case study in "Fremdschämen," the German word that people really ought to be saying when they say "cringe." Reason being, it was indeed cringe and embarrassing to see Lemon begin to unbutton his shirt on live TV on New Year's Eve, 2016, while doing what CNN apparently does best around that time of year: get wasted for the purpose of public entertainment.

As the Boston Globe quotes Lemon telling the camera on the night in question, "People are saying that I'm lit. Yeah, I'm lit. Who cares? New Orleans is lit." Lemon was 51 at the time. Lemon also spent the evening with his co-host, Brooke Baldwin, who at one point said to him, "The tequila is like — emitting from your pores." Lemon also got his ear pierced, played bartender, and perhaps — although this was not caught on camera — danced on a table to ABBA's "Dancing Queen" with a green lampshade on his head. Who knows?

Subsequent New Year's Eve antics include Lemon sucking the head of a crawfish proffered by a random stranger and confusing Caresse Jackman, a CBS affiliate reporter, for an ex-girlfriend after spotting her in a crowd. "I used to date her," The Philadelphia Inquirer quotes Lemon. "Mom, if you are watching at home, do you remember Michelle?"