The lack of diversity on Fox News has been the subject of some scrutiny for a while. In particular, the number of pretty blonde women featured on Fox shows has been pointed out again and again. Well after some serious fact checking, the world can now put all these concerns to rest.
Inspired by the meme of nine blonde Fox anchors/hosts that has been around for years, PunditFact went through all of Fox’s female hosts and anchors, and divided them into Blond and Not-blond. Yeah. PunditFact went through and sorted all the female talking heads by hair color. What they found was truly remarkable. While there are 14 white blonde ladies, there are 12 non blondes. Fascinating. They ruled:
A Facebook post used an image of female Fox News anchors to say that the network lacks diversity in its staff. We found that for those women who are anchors or hosts in any capacity, about half are blond. And while most are white, not all are.
The Facebook image gives the strong impression that all female Fox News anchors and hosts look alike. That’s misleading. We rate the claim Mostly False.
And by “most are white,” they mean 24/26 or 92.31% are white. Fox News has one African American female anchor and one Indian American female anchor according to PunditFact*. That’s it. Just saying.
As Josh Feldman at Mediaite points out, the fact-check itself was not even complete and excluded a few women like rotating co-hosts for Outnumbered. The whole thing is a pretty silly point to make, but what’s even sillier is the idea that “diversity” is quantified by the color of white women’s hair.
*Update: It has come to my attention that the line I originally wrote, “Fox News has one African American anchor and one Indian American anchor,” makes the dastardly and erroneous claim that there is only one black on-air personality at Fox News. There are, of course, multiple black people at Fox. While the sentence was clearly in the context of the PunditFact check, I have clarified and I hereby apologize for any harm caused. Please accept this Goat Simulator gif as a token of my condolences.