The PolitiFact spinoff PunditFact generally takes on what certain pundits say and whether they’re, you know, true or not. But PunditFact really took the cake today with a fact check of a stupid meme people have been passing around for years about what the women of Fox News have in common.
Here’s the image in question, normally supplanted with sarcastic comments like “the diversity of female Fox News anchors.”
PunditFact fact-checked this. Yes. Why? Because, as they explain, “we wanted to see if the criticism holds water.”
And in case you’re wondering, “Did they actually go down a list of female Fox News anchors and sort them by hair color?”… yep, that’s what they did:
This was fact-checked.
And their conclusion?
A Facebook post used an image of female Fox News anchors to say that the network lacks diversity in its staff. We found that for those women who are anchors or hosts in any capacity, about half are blond. And while most are white, not all are.
The Facebook image gives the strong impression that all female Fox News anchors and hosts look alike. That’s misleading. We rate the claim Mostly False.
I feel I need to emphasize again the point that they actually fact-checked this.
The fact-check, we should note, isn’t even complete. Rotating co-hosts are part of their criteria, so they’re (at the very least) leaving out Harris Faulkner, Katie Pavlich, Sandra Smith, Jedediah Bila, Stacey Dash, and Kennedy; all of whom are part of the rotating crew of Outnumbered co-hosts. They also forgot hosts like Melissa Francis and Liz Claman.
Oh, and another goofy error: They placed Heather Nauert in the non-blonde column. But… well, look, this is Nauert when she was last on The O’Reilly Factor:
[image via Fox/screengrab]
— —
Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
