I usually watch the local news on the CBS affiliate, and thought last week, “Hm, where’s Larry Mendte, the usual anchor? Guess he’s on vacation. Hm, his wife [an anchor on the local FOX affiliate] isn’t on vacation – and don’t they usually say something at the top of the broadcast like ‘I’m Joe Blow, in for the vacationing Larry Mendte’? Oh well, whatever.” This week, he still wasn’t on, so I googled him. The auto-fill suggested I search for “Larry Mendte resign” – Yikes. No wonder they’re not saying anything about him at Channel 3 – he’s under investigation by the FBI. For having illicitly read the email of his former coanchor, herself fired after a scandal up in NYC last winter when she cussed out a cop.
You can’t make this shit up.
ETA: Damn – wrong forum. Could someone ask a mod to move this to MPSIMS? thanks.
Okay, twicks, the original crime of cussing out a cop is kinda tacky for a news anchor; that I understand. And I know opening someone else’s mail is a federal crime. Is opening someone else’s email a federal crime too?
Forgive me for being ignorant of this story – is there more scandal to it? I’m all ears!
No reason why you should have heard of this – I live in Philly and watch the station where the anchors in question used to work, and I went two weeks before I caught on.
Here is a better version of the story – the issue is not just that he was reading Alycia Lane’s email, but that he was doing so in order to spread rumors to discredit her – apparently they had a rancorous feud going.
Hmmmm… my first impression is that there is a very amusing and typical mix of perspectives represented in the comments, after the article. There’s the “but they seemed so nice” ones. There’s the “get a life” ones. There’s the political lecture one. (not me this time, but sometimes it is.) And there’s the guy demanding to see the pictures.
We’ve had a few local anchors picked up on DUI’s on occasion, they make the news on all the local stations including their own. Then they come on and apologize for their behavior and everything is hunky-dorry again. I guess that doesn’t compare to being investigated by the FBI.
I dunno, Philadelphians like people who get investigated by the FBI. In the previous mayoral election (2003), John Street wasn’t doing too well until word game out that he was – he ended up getting re-elected.
At first I thought, “that’s ridiculous. Why would the FBI care if some TV news guy peeked at his former co-worker’s email?” Then I realized what the crime was. :smack: Reading somebody’s email without a warrant means he was impersonating a National Security Administration officer. The Feds are protecting their turf.
