Photo: Courtesy of Fox.It's been said that Fox News has too many blonde anchors, but that rumor can be put to rest. The numbers have been compiled, crunched, and analyzed, and the results are in: Fox actually has 12 non-blonde anchors and 14 blonde anchors.
Thank you, science math.
To be fair, it wasn't Fox that did the counting. It was PunditFact, a project funded by the Tampa Bay Times and the Poynter Institute. But, Fox anchors are using it to draw conclusions that can't be drawn. "This image has been bouncing around social media with disparaging comments about a lack of diversity," said news host Howard Kurtz. "I'm so relieved these dastardly allegations have been put to rest."
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Besides the fact that rotating co-hosts were left out of the count, there's another problem: Hair color does not define race, and therefore it is not a legitimate way to measure diversity. While it's true that an offhand statement like "Fox News has all blonde anchors," could be shorthand for describing a whitewashed workplace in everyday conversation, that kind of disregard for nuance has no place in anything called "research" or "study" or "fact."
Fox media critic (and blonde) Lauren Ashburn gets the absurdity of the study, but she uses it to make a different point. "Why doesn’t PolitiFact see how many shades of blonde there are on Fox News?" she asks sarcastically. "There’s ash blonde, there’s platinum blonde, maybe we could do dirty blonde and see how many variations there are because this is so important...What does this accomplish? Except to make fun of Fox News.”
Well, there is that. (Jezebel)
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