NEW YORK (AP) – To 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 must resign – no, that’s not enough.
“He has 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, however, a harrowing personal loss has turned her into a fighter for families who believe that a Cuomo-backed policy to encourage the transfer of COVID-19 positive patients to nursing homes was a deadly mistake.
“She really hates when people get screwed and … has always 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 might have a future there.
Cuomo has defended his guidelines, saying they followed scientific guidelines. His office did not return messages asking for comment about Dean.
Still, Dean has made some questionable public claims about the impact of Cuomo’s nursing home order and the coverage of another news organization. Her newfound role raises ethical questions at 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 advocate.”
March and April 2020 were a nightmare in New York, with the new corona virus spreading enormously. The timing was particularly cruel to Michael and Dolores Newman – the parents of Dean’s husband, Sean, known to family and friends as Mickey and Dee. Through Brooklyn, they were married three days before Valentine’s Day 1961.
83-year-old Mickey, a former firefighter, was at the Grandell Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Brooklyn with dementia and other problems. Dee had assisted living at the Long Island Living Center and hoped Mickey would join her as his health improved.
But he died on March 29, a few hours after Sean got a call saying he wasn’t feeling well. Dee, 79, died on April 13.
Looking at the deaths, the family was stunned to learn of the March 25 directive from the Cuomo government that nursing homes could not deny admission to someone just because they had COVID-19. The policy was extended to facilities for assisted living on April 7.
At the time, New York was desperately worried about the hospital space running out. Cuomo insisted that care was taken and that it was wrong to discriminate against people for having COVID.
The order was withdrawn in May. Stories surfaced of the efforts of the governor and his staff to hide the number of virus deaths among residents of nursing homes in New YorkDean couldn’t believe the vulnerable were at such a risk.
At first she did not speak about it publicly. That changed after watching CNN last May, when Chris Cuomo waved a giant cotton swab to joke about the big nose of his brother, the governor.
“It was so deaf,” she said. “It was disgusting.”
She shared her anger in a text message exchange with her boyfriend Tucker Carlson and, at his insistence, went to his show the following evening to tell her story.
She hasn’t stopped.
Dean swam against a strong current. Cuomo was popular, and his televised coronavirus briefings were praised by those who fail the accomplishments of then-President Donald Trump. He even wrote a book on leadership.
Now, with a sexual harassment scandal surrounding him, things have changed. Dean’s dislike of Cuomo was seen last month when she made a running commentary on Twitter at one of his news conferences.
His mouth is dry. He’s nervous. And he lies. “
“He’s just a shame.”
“You are a criminal.”
Bill Hammond, a senior health policy fellow at the Empire Center for State Policy, said Dean was the key to keeping the issue alive.
“Because she’s got a certain kind of celebrity, she’s grabbing attention and accessing the Fox News megaphone, and that’s a strong force,” Hammond said.
Dean has been with Fox since 2004 and is the weather forecaster for Fox & Friends. She has told her family’s story on the air to the show’s hosts, Carlson, Sean Hannity, Martha MacCallum, 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 beset 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 gets problematic when the personal gets political, she said. Journalists are generally prohibited from practicing politics.
Dean has spoken to young Republicans on Staten Island at a virtual city hall sponsored by the GOP state chairman at a rally hosted by the Democratic Assembly, Ron Kim, another Cuomo critic.
Fox wouldn’t make a manager available to talk about Dean. A spokeswoman notes that Dean is not a news reporter and is talking about an issue that has deeply affected her family. Fox compared it to Katie Couric urging people to take colon cancer tests, or Al Roker campaigning to raise awareness about diabetes.
Bartzen Culver said those situations are not remotely comparable.
“It might be wise to take this out of the context of Fox News and ask if the weather personality at our local station should prompt our mayor’s arrest,” she said. “I think that would make people feel profoundly uncomfortable, and rightly so.”
Dean said her bosses at Fox gave their full support.
“Obviously, it’s a position that is probably a little uncomfortable for them, because I’m the meteorologist and suddenly take on the role of an advocate,” she said. ‘But at the end of the day, my family was hit. And I feel like that’s an important role to play when there aren’t people who have a voice in this. “
Last month, three days before Valentine’s Day, she wrote a story for the Fox News website entitled, “Cuomo’s COVID nursing home policy robbed my in-laws of their 60th wedding anniversary.”
To make the connection explicit, she wrote that “their death warrant was signed as an executive order by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to place infected patients in places where our most vulnerable lived.”
Mickey Newman died in Grandell four days after Cuomo’s order was issued. The CDC says the average period between exposure to the virus and the appearance of symptoms is five days. While it’s not impossible for a person to get sick enough to die within four days of exposure, it’s very unlikely, said Dr. David Boulware, a 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 went into effect.
No one knows for sure how Dean’s in-laws contracted the virus, and their deaths are both tragedies. Still, there is other evidence to suggest that the transfer came from someone other than patients who were transferred to their facilities on behalf of the state, such as staff 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 facilities wouldn’t talk about the Newmans to The Associated Press.
Meanwhile, the Cuomo’s efforts to keep data secret, fend off blame for outbreaks in nursing homes, and questions about whether the state’s policies have exacerbated any outbreak have made families suspicious.
Cuomo said recently that the data withheld created a “void” that left angry and confused New Yorkers vulnerable to “conspiracy theories” and misinformation. ‘People get confused and people who have lost relatives in nursing homes start to say,’ I wonder if this is true. I wonder if my dad died because someone made a mistake, ” he said.
On. On January 30, Dean attacked NBC News and anchored Lester Holt on Twitter, saying they had “censored” an interviewed friend on the subject by making her say that New York had failed nursing home families instead of Cuomo. But NBC provided The Associated Press with a tape of reporter Kristen Dahlgren’s interview refuting the idea. Dean said the tape was polished, but offers no evidence to support it.
The story does not 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 not to put COVID-19 patients in a nursing home, and it’s clear she was talking about Cuomo. Best is also seen holding a sign that reads “Cuomo killed my mother.”
Dean dismisses thoughts of a political future, but not others.
“The best people who go into politics come out organically, like people who have not been candidates all their lives,” McCain said. Dean “has this way of speaking for ordinary Americans, which I find very interesting. I am one of the people behind the scenes who encouraged her to run. “
Dean said, ‘I don’t like being part of this political mess with the governor right now. But I do feel it’s a bit of a calling. I do.”