Human Rights Campaign strips Fox News of preferred LGBTQ employer status: ‘Enough is enough’
By Oliver Darcy, CNN Business
A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. You can sign up for free right here.
The largest LGBTQ advocacy group in the US has stripped Fox Corporation of its status as a preferred LGBTQ friendly employer and released a blistering statement condemning the network for its recent coverage of the LGBTQ community.
The move comes as Fox News relentlessly attacks Disney for the company’s belated opposition to the “Don’t Say Gay” law and for the entertainment giant’s efforts to incorporate the LGBTQ community into its films and other projects.
The right-wing talk network has in recent days portrayed Disney as a “creepy” company aiming to sexualize young children and indoctrinate them with a radical LGBTQ agenda. That’s not to say all of the commentary has been this explicit or fallen under this umbrella. But the general tenor of the network’s coverage has been in this vein.
Tucker Carlson, the highest-rated host on the channel, even went so far as to suggest that a Disney executive was exhibiting the behavior of a “sex offender” for efforts aimed at representing LGBTQ lifestyles in different projects.
That extreme — frankly dark — rhetoric has prompted the Human Rights Campaign to penalize Fox Corp.’s score on its Corporate Equality Index, a status that companies often work hard to achieve. In fact, Fox Corp. previously boasted that it had a 100% rating from the Human Rights Campaign as one of the “best places to work for LGBTQ equality.”
“I can confirm that Fox Corporation no longer has a score of 100 on the Corporate Equality Index,” Human Rights Campaign spox Aryn Fields told me on Friday. Fox was notified of the Human Rights Campaign’s decision via email early Friday afternoon…
“Enough is enough”
In explaining the decision to strip Fox of its status, the Human Rights Campaign issued a scathing statement. “Fox News has a history of sharing misinformation and disinformation about the LGBTQ+ community,” Fields said. “We know from our own research, which we put out earlier this week, what their disinformation and misinformation means for the LGBTQ+ community: perpetuating stigma and marginalization of transgender and non-binary people. At a time when transgender people — especially transgender children — are under attack in statehouses across the country, rhetoric has real consequences.”
“We can no longer allow Fox Corporation to maintain its score if Fox News personalities and contributors continue to deny the existence of transgender people, minimize the violence transgender individuals face, refer to parents of LGBTQ+ youth as perverts, or equate leaders of LGBTQ+ diversity and inclusions efforts with sex offenders,” Fields added. “Each of these actions happened in the last 72 hours. Enough is enough.”
Fox’s response
Fox Corp. is not commenting on the matter. But a Fox News spokesperson pointed out that the network just hired Caitlyn Jenner as a contributor this week. The Fox News spokesperson also pointed to the benefits that the company offers members of the LGBTQ community…
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