Fishman Threatens to Quit Over ‘KTLA Morning News’ ‘Slander’

KTLA Channel 5 anchorman Hal Fishman has threatened to quit his job if station management does not take steps to correct what he perceives was “a shocking and appalling slander” leveled against him on his station’s own “KTLA Morning News” two weeks ago.

On that program, the station’s bad-boy entertainment reporter Sam Rubin joked that Fishman once “wore a skirt for a co-anchor job in Spokane” as part of a bit in which he compared Fishman to Dustin Hoffman, who dressed as a woman in “Tootsie.”

Greg Nathanson, KTLA’s general manager, said that Rubin’s comment, while obviously farcical, was “stupid” and that Rubin will be “disciplined,” although he refused to elaborate.

“I have a good sense of humor,” Fishman said in an interview Tuesday. “But I don’t think that making an outrageous, preposterous slander about someone whose success is based on credibility and honesty is at all funny. I am not a cross-dresser and I never had a job in Spokane. To say someone engages in aberrational behavior, I don’t think that is a joke. What is the audience going to think?”

Reached by telephone Tuesday, Rubin insisted that he meant no harm. “I’m very sorry that Mr. Fishman was either offended or felt his journalistic integrity was infringed upon,” Rubin said. “Since the incident, Mr. Fishman’s ‘News at 10’ remains the No. 1 news show in its time slot. The viewing public has gotten over it. There is no way, considering the manner in which it was presented, that it could be taken as anything other than a joke.”

Fishman has asked his agent, Ed Hookstraten, to meet with station management, and he said that if he does not receive the support he demands, he will consider walking off the job.

“We will not change the morning news,” Nathanson said. “Are we going to watch what Sam says so he doesn’t say damaging or false things about our anchors or anyone else? Yes, we will have to control him more so we don’t get sued. But Sam is Sam. He’s like Peck’s bad boy and that is part of the appeal of the show.”

Nathanson said that Fishman often complains about the frivolousness of some elements of the morning show because he is afraid that it will somehow taint the seriousness and credibility of his own straightforward show at night.

Rubin said he will probably no longer make any more references to Fishman to avoid any further controversy, but to date station management has not asked him to change what he does.