NEW YORK (AP) – Fox News Channel’s Janice Dean, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, is a liar and a criminal. He blames others for his ‘disastrous decisions’. He has to resign – no, that’s not enough.
“He needs to go to jail!” she thunders on ‘Fox & Friends’.
Dean is not a political commentator – she’s Fox’s senior meteorologist. In recent years, however, a serious personal loss has turned her into a fighter for families who believe a policy backed by Cuomo that encourages the transfer of COVID-19-positive patients to nursing homes has been a deadly mistake.
“She really hates being bullied and … always fights for the guy,” said Meghan McCain of The View, who once worked with Dean at Fox News.
McCain knows politics, and suggests that her friend may have a future there.
Cuomo defended his prescriptionsand said that they followed scientific guidelines. His office did not return any messages to comment on Dean.
Yet Dean has made some dubious public claims about the impact of Cuomo’s nursing home and the coverage of another news organization. Her newfound role raises ethical questions for Fox.
“She is certainly a passionate and outspoken spokesperson on this issue,” said Jeffrey McCall, a media professor at DePauw University. “But it’s also clear that Janice is using her profile as a Fox News Channel personality to advocate.”
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March and April 2020 was a nightmare in New York, with the new coronavirus spreading wildly. The timing was especially cruel to Michael and Dolores Newman – the parents of Dean’s husband, Sean, known to family and friends as Mickey and Dee. Through and through Brooklyn, they were married on Valentine’s Day 1961.
The 83-year-old Mickey, a former firefighter, was in the Grandell Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Brooklyn with dementia and other problems. Dee was in assisted living at the Long Island Living Center, hoping Mickey would join her as she improved her health.
But he died on March 29, hours after Sean called and said he was not feeling well. Dee, 79, died on April 13.
In investigating the deaths, the family was delighted with the Cuomo administration’s order on March 25 that nursing homes could not deny access to anyone simply because they had COVID-19. The policy was expanded on April 7 to cover emergency care facilities.
New York was then desperately worried about the fact that the hospital space was no longer running out. Cuomo maintained that care must be taken and that it is wrong to discriminate against people because they have COVID.
By May, the order was revoked. Stories have surfaced about how long the governor and his staff will be hiding the number of virus deaths among residents of nursing homes in New York. Dean could not believe that the defenseless were in such danger.
At first she did not talk about it in public. That changed after watching CNN last May when Chris Cuomo swung a giant cotton swab to joke about the big nose of his brother, the governor.
“It was so deaf-mute,” she said. “It was disgusting.”
She shared her anger in a text exchange with her friend Tucker Carlson and at the insistence went to his show the next night to tell her story.
She did not stop.
Dean swims at a powerful tide. Cuomo was popular and his television coronavirus briefings earned praise from people who at the time found President Donald Trump’s performance desirable. He even wrote a book on leadership.
Now, with a scandal of sexual harassment revolving around him, things have changed. Dean’s dislike of Cuomo was evident last month when she commented on one of his news conferences on Twitter.
His mouth is dry. He’s nervous. And he’s lying. ‘
“He’s just a disgrace.”
“You’re a criminal.”
Bill Hammond, senior fellow for health policy at the Empire Center for State Policy, said Dean is the key to keeping the case alive.
“Because she has a certain kind of personality, she attracts attention and she has access to the bullshit of Fox News, and that’s a powerful force,” Hammond said.
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Dean has been working for Fox since 2004 and is the weather forecaster for Fox & Friends. She told her family’s story on air to the host of the program, to Carlson, to Sean Hannity, to Martha MacCallum, to Harris Faulkner and others.
The story hit Fox’s sweet spot. For an audience dominated by conservatives who are tired of hearing Trump criticize his pandemic response, it was an issue that raised serious questions about a politician inspired by many liberals.
Many news organizations have effectively used the personal experiences of employees to tell stories about the pandemic, says Kathleen Bartzen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin.
It becomes problematic when the person becomes political, she said. Journalists are generally prohibited from engaging in politics.
Dean chatted with young Republicans on Staten Island, in a virtual city hall sponsored by the GOP state chairman, during a rally hosted by Democratic MP Ron Kim, another Cuomo critic.
Fox would not make a manager available to talk about Dean. A spokeswoman notes that Dean is not a news reporter, and talks about an issue that has deeply affected her family. Fox compared it to Katie Couric who asked people to do colon cancer tests, or Al Roker who campaigned for diabetes awareness.
Bartzen Culver said these situations are not remotely comparable.
“It may be wise to take this out of the context of Fox News and ask whether the weather personality at our local station should ask for our mayor to be arrested,” she said. “I think it will make people seriously uncomfortable and rightly so.”
Dean said she fully supported her bosses at Fox.
“It’s obviously a position that’s probably a little uncomfortable for them, because I’m the meteorologist and suddenly I like this role as a lawyer,” she said. ‘But at the end of the day, my family was affected. And I feel that it’s an important role to play if there are no people voting on this. ‘
Three days before Valentine’s Day last month, she wrote a story for Fox News’ website entitled: ‘Cuomo’s COVID Nursing Homes Robbed My In-Law Family of Their 60th Wedding Anniversary.’
To make the connection explicit, she wrote that “their death order as executive order was signed by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to place infected patients in the places where our most vulnerable live.”
Mickey Newman died at Grandell four days after Cuomo’s order was issued. The CDC says the average period between exposure to the virus and symptoms that appear is five days. Although it is not impossible to become ill within four days of exposure to death, it is very unlikely, said Dr. David Boulware, a professor of infectious diseases and international medicine at the University of Minnesota, said.
Similarly, Dee died six days after the state decision went into effect for relief facilities.
No one knows for sure how Dean’s in-laws contracted the virus, and that their deaths are both tragedies. Yet there is other evidence to suggest that the transfer comes from someone other than patients who were transferred to their facilities at the request of the state, such as staff or visitors.
“We do not know the story,” said Donna Johnson, Dean’s sister-in-law. You’re trying to ask. No one really answers you. ”
The facilities would not talk about The Newmans with The Associated Press.
Meanwhile, the Cuomo government’s efforts to keep data secret, divert any blame for outbreaks at the nursing home and raise questions about whether state policies exacerbate any outbreaks have made families suspicious.
Cuomo recently said the weakened data creates a ‘gap’ that has left angry and confused New Yorkers vulnerable to ‘conspiracy theories’ and misinformation.
On. On January 30, Dean attacked NBC News and anchor Lester Holt on Twitter, saying they had “censored” a friend who was interviewed on the subject by letting her say that New York had let nursing home families down, instead of Cuomo . But NBC provided a tape of reporter Kristen Dahlgren to The Associated Press refuting the idea. Dean said the band was doctored but provided no evidence to substantiate it.
The story does not support the idea that NBC tried to protect Cuomo. Dahlgren quotes Dean’s friend, Dawn Best, as saying that a ‘third-class’ should know not to place COVID-19 patients in a nursing home, and it is clear that she was referring to Cuomo. Best is also seen with a sign that says, “Cuomo killed my mother.”
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Dean waves thoughts of a political future, but others do not.
“The best people who enter politics are organic to it, like people who have not been eligible for their entire lives,” McCain said. Dean ‘has this way of speaking for ordinary Americans which I find compelling. I am one of the people behind the scenes who encouraged her to present her. ”
Dean said: ‘I do not currently enjoy being part of this political mess with the governor. But I feel it’s a bit of a calling. I do.”