Fox News’ Howard Kurtz Admits Caption Calling Biden a ‘Wannabe Dictator’ Went ‘Too Far’
Fox News anchor Howard Kurtz admitted that the network went “too far” with its recent chyron calling President Biden a “wannabe dictator.”
“Fox News briefly put up a banner that went too far on the day of Donald Trump’s arraignment, referring to President Biden: ‘Wannabe dictator speaks at White House after having his political rival arrested,'” Kurtz said on “MediaBuzz” Sunday. “Fox said in a statement the chyron was taken down immediately and was addressed.”
Kurtz’s debrief for the week came days after Fox News aired the bold banner at the end of Tuesday’s 8:00 p.m. hour. Under a split screen of Biden and Trump, it read: “Wannabe dictator speaks at the White House after having his political rival arrested.”
By Wednesday afternoon, the network issued a statement saying “the chyron was taken down immediately and was addressed,” and by Thursday, the Fox News producer responsible for the chyron left the network.
Alexander McCaskill, a senior producer at the network who formerly served as managing editor for “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” detailed his departure in a social media post, noting that his last day at the network was on Thursday.
“Today was my last day at Fox,” McCaskill wrote on Instagram. “It’s been a wild 10 years and it was the best place I’ve ever worked because of the great people I met. But the time has come. I asked them to let me go, and they finally did. To all my friends there: I will miss you forever.”
Following the controversy, former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, whose relationship with the network ended abruptly in April, dished what he claimed to be insider knowledge on the debacle in his Twitter show by revealing that a producer that had left the company was responsible for the chyron, despite not naming McCaskill.
“Inside Fox, the women who run the network panicked” following the chyron’s airing, Carlson said. “First they scolded the producer who put the banner on the screen. Less than 24 hours after that, he resigned. He’d been at Fox for more than a decade.”
