Fox meteorologist turns into fierce Cuomo critic
NEW YORK » To Fox News Channel’s Janice Dean, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is a liar and a criminal. He blames others for his “disastrous decisions.” He needs to resign — no, that’s not enough.
“He needs to go to jail!” she thundered on “Fox & Friends.”
Dean isn’t a political commentator — she’s Fox’s senior meteorologist. In the past year, though, a searing personal loss has transformed her into a fighter for families who believe that a Cuomo-backed policy encouraging the transfer of COVID-19 positive patients into nursing homes was a deadly error.
“She really hates when people are being screwed with and ... always has fought for the little guy,” said Meghan McCain of “The View,” who once worked with Dean at Fox News.
McCain knows politics, and suggests her friend may have a future there.
Cuomo has defended his directives, saying they followed scientific guidelines. His office did not return messages seeking comment about Dean.
Yet Dean has made some dubious public claims about the impact of Cuomo’s nursing home order and another news organization’s coverage. Her newfound role raises ethical questions for Fox.
“She is certainly a passionate and articulate spokesperson on this matter,” said Jeffrey McCall, a media ethics professor at
DePauw University. “But it is also clear that Janice is using her profile as a Fox News Channel personality to engage in advocacy.” ___
March and April 2020 was a nightmare in New York, with the new coronavirus spreading wildly. The timing was particularly cruel for Michael and Dolores Newman — the parents of Dean’s husband, Sean, known to family and friends as Mickey and Dee. Brooklyn through and through, they were married three days before 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 issues. Dee was in assisted living, at the Long Island Living Center, and hoped Mickey would join her when his health improved.
But he died March 29, a few hours after Sean got a call saying he wasn’t feeling well. Dee, 79, died on April 13.
Looking into the deaths, the family was flabbergasted to learn of the Cuomo administration’s March 25 directive that nursing homes could not deny admission to someone solely because they had COVID-19. The policy was expanded to cover assisted living facilities on April 7.
New York was desperately worried about running out of hospital space then. Cuomo insisted care was taken and that it was wrong to discriminate against people because they had COVID.
By May, the order was rescinded. Stories emerged about the lengths to which the governor and his staff went to conceal the number of virus deaths among New York nursing home residents. Dean couldn’t believe the vulnerable were put at such risk.
She didn’t talk about it publicly at first. That changed after watching CNN last May when Chris Cuomo brandished a giant cotton swab to joke about the big nose of his brother, the governor.
“It was so tone deaf,” she said. “It was disgusting.”
She shared her anger in a text exchange with her friend Tucker Carlson and, at his urging, went on his show the next night to tell her story.
She hasn’t stopped. Dean was swimming against a powerful tide. Cuomo was popular, his televised coronavirus briefings earning praise from people who found thenPresident Donald Trump’s performance wanting. He even wrote a book on leadership.
Now, with a sexual harassment scandal swirling around him, things have changed. Dean’s disgust with Cuomo was on display last month when she kept a running commentary on Twitter during one of his news conferences.
“His mouth is dry. He’s nervous. And he’s lying.” “He is just a disgrace.” “You are a criminal.” Bill Hammond, senior fellow for health policy at the Empire Center for State Policy, said Dean was key to keeping the issue alive.
“Because she has a certain kind of celebrity, she attracts attention and she has access to the bullhorn of Fox News, and that’s a powerful force,” Hammond said.
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Dean has worked at Fox since 2004, and is the weather forecaster on “Fox & Friends.” She’s told her family’s story on the air to the show’s hosts, 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 tired of hearing Trump criticized for his pandemic response, here was an issue that raised serious questions about a politician lionized by many liberals.
Many news organizations have effectively used the personal experiences of employees to tell stories about the pandemic, said Kathleen Bartzen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin.
It becomes problematic when the personal turns political, she said. Journalists
are generally forbidden from practicing politics.
Dean has spoken to young Republicans in Staten Island, on a virtual town hall sponsored by the state GOP chairman, at a rally hosted by Democratic Assemblyman Ron Kim, another Cuomo critic.