Out CNN Headline News anchor Thomas Roberts has lost his job. According to Canada.com, the news channel terminated the 4-6 p.m. daily newscast Roberts co-hosted with Kathleen Kennedy; however, the station promised to find new assignments for both.
Roberts acknowledged that he is gay while speaking to delegates at the annual National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association convention that recently took place in Miami. Roberts said he has been slowly coming out at CNN for several years and admitted that being a closeted news anchor is hard.
In recent years, Roberts himself made headlines when Jerome F. Toohey Jr., a priest and chaplain at a Towson, Md., boys school, pled guilty to sexually abusing Roberts for six months after the high school sophomore came to him in 1987 for counseling, The Baltimore Sun reported. Earlier this year, Roberts and Michael Goles, who was also molested by the same priest, urged Maryland legislators to extend the time that child sexual abuse victims can file civil lawsuits against their abusers, the Washington Post noted.
Before joining CNN, Roberts was with NBC affiliate WAVY-TV in the Norfolk-Virginia Beach, Va., market, where he anchored the 5 p.m. news and served as an investigative and consumer reporter. Among the honors he received was a 2001 Edward R. Murrow Award for a documentary he produced.