NEW YORK (AP) – For Janice Dean of Fox News, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is a liar and a criminal. He blames others for his “disastrous decisions”. He needs to resign – no, that is not enough.
“He needs to go to jail!” she thundered on “Fox & Friends”.
Dean is not a political commentator – she is Fox’s senior meteorologist. Last year, however, a marked personal loss made her a fighter for families who believe that a policy supported by Cuomo that encourages the transfer of positive patients to COVID- 19 for nursing homes was a deadly mistake.
“She really hates it when people are being cheated and … always fought for the little boy,” said Meghan McCain of “The View”, who has worked with Dean on Fox News.
McCain knows politics and suggests that his friend may have a future there.
Cuomo defended his guidelines, saying they followed the scientific guidelines. His office did not return messages requesting comments on Dean.
Still, Dean made some dubious public statements about the impact of Cuomo’s nursing home order and the coverage of another news organization. His new role raises ethical questions for Fox.
“She is certainly a passionate and articulate spokesperson on this issue,” said Jeffrey McCall, professor of media ethics at DePauw University. “But it is also clear that Janice is using her profile as a Fox News Channel personality to engage in advocacy.”
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March and April 2020 were a nightmare in New York, with the new coronavirus spreading wildly. The moment was particularly cruel for Michael and Dolores Newman – the parents of Dean’s husband Sean, known to his family and friends like Mickey and Dee. Brooklyn completely, they were married on Valentine’s Day 1961.
Mickey, 83, a former firefighter, was at the Grandell Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Brooklyn with dementia and other problems. Dee was in an assisted living, at the Long Island Living Center, and expected Mickey to join her when her health improved.
But he died on March 29, just hours after Sean got a call saying he was not feeling well. Dee, 79, died on April 13.
Analyzing the deaths, the family was stunned to learn of the Cuomo government directive of March 25 that nursing homes could not deny someone’s admission just 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 space at the hospital. Cuomo insisted that care was taken and that it was wrong to discriminate against people because they had COVID.
In May, the order was rescinded. Stories emerged about how far the governor and his team went to hide the number of virus deaths among New York nursing home residents.. Dean couldn’t believe that the vulnerable were at such a risk.
She didn’t speak about it publicly at first. That changed after watching CNN last May, when Chris Cuomo brandished a giant cotton swab to play on the nose of his brother, the governor.
“It was so deaf,” she said. “It was disgusting.”
She shared her anger at a text exchange with her friend Tucker Carlson and, at his insistence, went to the program the following night to tell her story.
She didn’t stop.
Dean was swimming against a strong tide. Cuomo was popular, his televised coronavirus briefings receiving praise from people who deemed then President Donald Trump’s performance to be insufficient. He even wrote a book on leadership.
Now, with a sexual harassment scandal revolving around him, things have changed. Dean’s distaste for Cuomo was evident last month, when she kept a comment on Twitter during one of her press conferences.
“His mouth is dry. He is nervous. And he is lying. “
“He’s just a disgrace.”
“You are a criminal.”
Bill Hammond, senior health policy researcher at the Empire Center for State Policy, said that Dean was the key to keeping the issue alive.
“Because she has a certain type of celebrity, she attracts attention and has access to the Fox News megaphone, and that is a powerful force,” said Hammond.
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Dean has worked at Fox since 2004 and is the weather forecaster on “Fox & Friends”. She told her family’s story on the air to the hosts of the show, to Carlson, to Sean Hannity, to Martha MacCallum, to Harris Faulkner and others.
The story reached Fox’s sweet spot. For an audience dominated by conservatives tired of hearing Trump criticized for his response to the pandemic, here was a question that raised serious questions about a politician celebrated by many liberals.
Many news organizations have effectively used employees’ personal experiences 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 staff becomes political, she said. Journalists are generally prohibited from practicing politics.
Dean spoke to young Republicans on Staten Island, at a virtual city hall sponsored by the state Republican President, at a rally organized by Democratic Representative Ron Kim, another Cuomo critic.
Fox did not provide an executive to speak about Dean. A spokeswoman notes that Dean is not a news reporter and is talking about an issue that has deeply affected his family. Fox compared this to Katie Couric by encouraging people to get colon cancer tests, or Al Roker campaigning to raise awareness about diabetes.
Bartzen Culver said that these situations are not even remotely comparable.
“It would 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 the arrest of our mayor,” she said. “I think that would make people deeply uncomfortable and rightly so.”
Dean said his bosses at Fox were fully supportive.
“Obviously, it is a position that is probably a little uncomfortable for them, because I am the meteorologist and suddenly I am in the role of being an advocate,” she said. “But at the end of the day, my family was affected. And I feel that this is an important role to play, if there are no people who have a voice in this. “
Three days before Valentine’s Day last month, she wrote a story for the Fox News website entitled, “The policies of the Cuomo de Cuomo nursing home stole my in-laws for their 60th wedding anniversary.”
Making the connection explicit, she wrote that “their death sentence was signed as an executive order by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, to place infected patients in the places where our most vulnerable lived.”
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 the onset of symptoms is five days. While it is not impossible for a person to be sick enough to die within four days of exposure, it is very unlikely, said Dr. David Boulware, professor of infectious diseases and international medicine at the University of Minnesota.
Likewise, Dee died six days after the state directive for assisted living facilities came into effect.
No one is quite sure how Dean’s in-laws got the virus, and their deaths are tragedies. However, there is other evidence to suggest that the transmission came from someone other than patients transferred to their facilities at the behest of the state – such as employees or visitors.
“We don’t know the story,” said Donna Johnson, Dean’s sister-in-law. “You try to ask. Nobody really answers you. “
The facility did not speak about the Newmans for The Associated Press.
Meanwhile, the Cuomo government’s efforts to keep the data confidential, deflect any blame for outbreaks in nursing homes and ignore questions about whether state policies have worsened any outbreaks have made families suspicious.
Cuomo said recently that the retained data created an “emptiness” that 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 that they “censored” a friend interviewed about the matter, causing her to say that New York failed families of nursing homes, rather than Cuomo . But NBC provided the Associated Press with a tape of reporter Kristen Dahlgren’s interview that refutes the idea. Dean said the tape was tampered with, but offers no evidence to support it.
History fails to support the idea that NBC was trying to protect Cuomo. Dahlgren quotes Dean’s friend Dawn Best as saying that a “third grader” should know that he should not put COVID-19 patients in a nursing home, and of course she was referring to Cuomo. Best is also seen holding a sign saying, “Cuomo killed my mother”.
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Dean dismisses thoughts about a political future, but others do not.
“The best people who get into politics get there organically, like people who haven’t run for office in their entire lives,” said McCain. Dean “has a way of speaking only to ordinary Americans that I find very attractive. I am one of the people behind the scenes who has encouraged you to apply. “
Dean said: “I don’t like to be part of this political mess now with the governor. But I feel like it’s a little bit of a call. I make.”