The story below is from our May/June 2015 issue. For the full story download our FREE iOS app or view our digital edition for FREE today!
The former Channel 10 anchor is apparently not eager to talk about it, however.
Barbara Gibbs’ ignominious and still officially unexplained firing as news co-anchor at WSLS TV in Roanoke remains a fringe mystery.
So, mysterious, in fact, that she obviously does not want to talk about it 15 years later. A number of efforts to reach her at ABC11 Eyewitness News in Raleigh, N.C., fell on deaf ears, but some facts are clear. It appears most likely that she was fired for her pose on the cover of The Roanoker that year, and she has recovered quite well, thank you.
In an October, 2014 column, Roanoke Times media correspondent Ralph Berrier talked of the “provocative pose” by Barbara Gibbs on a 2000 Roanoker cover (featured in October as part of a 40th anniversary display of the magazine’s covers) and Wikipedia mentions her being “dismissed” by NewsChannel 10 “for reasons that were never specified.” The entry discusses several of the station’s firings that “generated a great deal of negative publicity for the station.”
Gibbs, who was immensely popular in this market during her two years as co-anchor of the 6 and 11 newscasts at Channel 10, wasn’t unemployed for long. She latched on with ABC 11 Eyewitness News in Raleigh, N.C., in 2001 and these days is anchor of the morning and noon news.
Gibbs was replaced briefly at WSLS by Karen McNew, who recently left to take a position at Carilion Clinic. McNew, at the time of the Gibbs firing, was morning anchor and three years later became co-anchor with John Carlin at 6 p.m.
Gibbs won an Emmy in 2008 for the story “Homeless Singers,” and has since been nominated for another.
She is deeply involved in Raleigh’s Jimmy V Celebrity Golf Tournament, which benefits cancer.
The Raleigh station where she works reaches a million households in a 23-county area of North Carolina and Virginia and does 33 hours of news a week.
Gibbs, a Memphis native who grew up in Mobile, Alabama, is noted for her devotion to Auburn University football. She is an Auburn grad and visits family in Alabama regularly. She lives in Durham with her Maltese cat, Sophie.
