A former ABC anchor said he attempted suicide after being exposed to hazing, bullying and racism at the US news giant, all after another, unnamed Black correspondent welcomed him to “Mickey’s plantation” – a comparison of the network’s owner, Disney, to a slave-owning estate in the old American south.
“The sense I got from them was that it was in reference to veiled racism, and there was some truth to what was behind it,” Kendis Gibson told Page Six, a celebrity news and gossip site from the Murdoch-owned New York Post.
Gibson was promoting a memoir, Five Trips: An Investigative Journey into Mental Health, Psychedelic Healing, and Saving a Life, which he describes as a “whimsical, emotional” story told “through five literal and physical psychedelic trips”.
Gibson joined ABC News in Washington DC in 2014 and soon moved to New York, where he hosted an overnight show. Network stars including Robin Roberts and George Stephanopoulos welcomed him, he said, but his taxing hours contributed to “an underlying depression already there”.
Bosses would not listen to his requests to change to more sociable hours, Gibson said, so he turned to the drug Ambien, to cope with insomnia and anxiety.
Gibson said he also had to cope with covert racism, such as when he wore jeans on air and was told by an unnamed executive: “You’re doing television news now, not attending a rap concert. Don’t ever wear jeans again.”
“I was so naïve,” Gibson said, claiming bosses also turned against him after he helped lead a diversity taskforce, meant to encourage the hiring of more Black employees in senior positions.
“I had rose-colored glasses on,” Gibson said. “I didn’t think there was racism taking place. I didn’t see all the indications.”
Gibson told Page Six his appearances on Good Morning America, ABC News’s flagship show, went from 212 in two years before the taskforce to eight in two years after. He also said he saw strong pitches turned down, which “screw[ed] with my psyche”.
In October 2018, Gibson said, he reached breaking point. After an overnight broadcast, he took Ambien and drank wine, then went to sleep. When he woke up, he texted his then partner to say goodbye. Gibson told the outlet that the drugs and alcohol in his system rendered him unable to follow through with his plan.
Friends helped him recover, he said, ushering him back on-air the same day and into therapy. After being offered a one-year overnight extension and a $10,000 wage increase he called a “pittance”, Gibson moved to MSNBC.
But back at ABC, the executive who reprimanded Gibson for wearing jeans allegedly also remarked that the network spent “more on toilet paper than we ever would” on Gibson.
That, Page Six said, left Gibson “screaming, and crying in a fetal position”.
“I went into such a dark place on that bathroom floor,” Gibson said. “It was such a tough moment for me. It was clear that I wasn’t fully healed.”
The executive was also reported, by HuffPost in 2020, to have said of Roberts, the star ABC anchor who is Black and who requested a pay raise, that “it wasn’t as if the network was asking [her] to ‘pick cotton’.”.
Gibson moved to Miami, to present local news. Then, Page Six said, he spent “two years learning from Bipoc [Black, Indigenous and people of color] plant medicine experts”.
“I set out to write a book about my depression, and one thing led to another, and it just evolved into how different psychedelics helped me,” he said. “I’m not pushing anybody into psychedelics, but hopefully it opens up a conversation and encourages people to explore alternatives.”
This year, Gibson returned to news, as an afternoon anchor for PIX11 in New York.
“I’m in a different space,” he said. “It’s the first time I’ve been anywhere where I’m not looking for the next job and I’m comfortable in my skin … It’s not an early morning shift. I’m still not trying to test myself with those hours yet.”
ABC declined to comment.
In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org.
