Rick Sanchez is sorry. Really.

This time, Rick Sanchez really sounded remorseful.

In an appearance on ABC's "Good Morning America" Friday morning, the ousted CNN anchor said flatly that he "screwed up" in calling Jon Stewart a bigot and suggesting that Jews run the networks--comments that cost him his job last week.

"I apologize and it was wrong for me to be so careless and so inartful," Sanchez said. "But it happened and I can't take it back and you know what now I have to stand up and be responsible."

The tone was much different than in a statement earlier this week, when Sanchez extended an apology to anyone who "may have been offended."

Sanchez told George Stephanopoulos he was tired after working 14-hour days doing programs for CNN in the afternoon and evening, before giving up his prime-time spot to newly hired hosts Eliot Spitzer and Kathleen Parker.

"I was feeling a little bit put out. And I was feeling a little sensitive," Sanchez said. "And I was looking at the landscape and I was looking and I was seeing [little diversity] and I externalized the problem and I put it on Jon Stewart's shoulders and I was wrong to do that."

When Stephanopoulos pressed him on earlier remarks in which he rattled off the names of Jewish neoconservatives, Sanchez said it was important for him to raise difficult questions when no one else would. He added that Stewart had been gracious when he called the Comedy Central host to apologize and said he made fun of Sanchez because he liked him.

Sanchez also heaped praise on CNN, the network that dumped him 24 hours after the comments.

The resentment that gave rise to Sanchez's remarks in the Sirius XM interview were still on display, however. He pointedly noted that no prime-time cable news shows are hosted by Hispanics or other minorities.



