He later moved to KCRL-TV, where he served as the station's production manager, and followed that with daytime talk show Cafferty & Company on WDAF-TV in Kansas City, Missouri.
Cafferty left WNBC-TV around Thanksgiving 1989 due to a contract dispute and at Christmas, he joined rival WNYW, where he anchored the Fox flagship station's 7:00 p.m. news and a short-lived late night show, Newsline New York.
[3] Cafferty is the author of the book It's Getting Ugly Out There: The Frauds, Bunglers, Liars, and Losers Who Are Hurting America, published on September 10, 2007 by John Wiley & Sons.
[4] The book is a satirical critique of political and social issues, including the long arm of big business, the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina, expanding on many of themes covered on Cafferty's Situation Room segment and chastising the growing culture of sensationalism and tabloid journalism in modern news media.
"[7] On February 15, 2006, when Fox News Channel commentator Brit Hume interviewed Vice-President Dick Cheney after he had shot Harry Whittington in a hunting accident, Cafferty remarked, "I would guess it didn't exactly represent a profile in courage for the vice-president to wander over there to the F-word network for a sitdown with Brit Hume.
"[8] As this is a common euphemism used at CNN to refer to Rupert Murdoch's network, Cafferty later clarified: "Get your mind out of the gutter.
"[8] Cafferty was reprimanded by the president of CNN when he called Donald Rumsfeld "an obnoxious jerk and war criminal" on the eve of the 2006 midterm election.
[9] He made an on-air acknowledgment of having "stepped over the line", but later told the interviewer, "I will go to my grave as Jack Cafferty, private citizen, believing that these people committed war crimes.
Though he acknowledges his habit of "saying some pretty outrageous stuff", Cafferty has characterized this as part of his job description: "I get paid to ask questions I don't know the answers to and to complain about the things that bother me.
"[13] On November 17, 2004, touching on the kidnapping and murder of the Wall Street Journal's South Asia Bureau Chief Daniel Pearl, Cafferty remarked: "The Arab World is where innocent people are kidnapped, blindfolded, tied up, tortured and beheaded, and then videotape of all of this is released to the world as though they’re somehow proud of their barbarism.
"[13] The next day the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee accused Cafferty of "hateful rhetoric" and stated that he had "a history of insensitive remarks towards many minority groups".
[13] On the April 9, 2008 broadcast of CNN's The Situation Room, asked to comment on the United States' relationship with China, Cafferty responded: "I think they're basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last 50 years".
On the April 14, 2008 broadcast of CNN's Situation Room, Jack Cafferty clarified his remarks: "Last week, during a discussion of the controversy surrounding China's hosting of the Olympic Games, I said that the Chinese are basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they have been for the last 50 years.
CNN has the highest respect for Chinese people around the world and we have no doubt that there was genuine offense felt by them over the Jack Cafferty commentary.
On the September 26, 2008 edition of The Situation Room, Cafferty criticized Republican presidential candidate John McCain's vice presidential nominee, Alaska governor Sarah Palin after she did what he referred to as a "disastrous interview" with CBS news anchor Katie Couric when she could not clearly answer Couric's questions about the federal government's intervention into Wall Street.
Cafferty went on to say that "if John McCain wins, this woman will be one 72 year old's heart beat away from becoming President of the United States, and if that doesn't scare the hell out of you, it should!"
[24] Cafferty pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and misdemeanor charges of reckless driving, assault and harassment after striking a cyclist and knocking him off his bike on May 14, 2003.
[26] On the September 5, 2008 episode of The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, it was revealed that Cafferty's wife of 35 years, Carol, had died that day of unknown causes.