Fox demands workers reveal vaccination status as top stars hit out at similar policies on air
Fox News, however, has not mandated that its staffers be vaccinated
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Your support makes all the difference.Fox News has said that employees “must disclose their vaccination status,” despite its major stars advocating a stance contrary to the company’s policy on air.
On Tuesday, Suzanne Scott, Fox News chief executive said that the company has “asked all employees — whether on-site as part of our essential workforce or working remotely — to upload their vaccination status.”
She added in the memo that “all employees must enter their status no later than today, August 17th, by close of business,” AdWeek, which obtained the note, reported.
The network says that this was being done “for space planning and contact tracing purposes in conjunction with the state city health and safety guidelines.”
Ms Scott wrote to the staff that masks remained optional for vaccinated employees but in small, confined spaces with “limited opportunities for social distancing and where there are multiple employees, including control rooms,” employees are required to wear masks.
Fox News anchors Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity have, however, been opposed to the idea of vaccination passports and in fact, Carlson had claimed that asking about his vaccination status was akin to asking about his sex life. Hannity had invoked “doctor-patient confidentiality” when talking about vaccination status.
Many pointed out that the network asking its employees to update their vaccination status in the company’s internal database was in contrast to what the company stars had been advocating on air.
For months, Fox News stars kept saying that asking about vaccination status was anti-American and “a threat to personal freedom.” They had also played up Republican Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s rejection of vaccine passports.
AdWeek reported that at the moment Fox News does not appear to mandate staffers be vaccinated.
Other media companies like WarnerMedia and Disney are not allowing staffers to be in the office unless they have been vaccinated.
WarnerMedia-owned CNN fired three staffers for entering the office premises unvaccinated earlier this month. CNN Worldwide chief Jeff Zucker had said in a memo that the network was targeting mid-October as a return-to-office date.
He had said: “In the past week, we have been made aware of three employees who were coming to the office unvaccinated. All three have been terminated. Let me be clear -- we have a zero-tolerance policy on this.”
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