Although Fox News has refused to officially comment on its decision to pull Jeanine Pirro’s show, Justice with Judge Jeanine, last night, today “a source” told CNN’s Brian Stelter that Pirro has been suspended for two weeks.
—@brianstelter reports, per a source, that Fox News suspended @JudgeJeanine for two weeks following her comments on @IlhanMN. (Hence why she wasn’t on air last night.)
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) March 17, 2019
As Ellen wrote yesterday, Pirro’s attack on Rep. Ilhan Omar last week – suggesting she was anti-American for wearing a hijab – was condemned by Fox News 24 hours after Pirro made the remarks in a pre-scripted commentary that was almost certainly approved by a senior producer.
Today, Fox’s own Media Buzz host, Howard Kurtz, seemed in the dark about Pirro’s status. “Without some public explanation of why the show was pulled, it certainly looks like a suspension,” he said. But as Media Matters noted, “Fox executives' instinctive secrecy just shows how afraid they are of their network’s audience: If Fox News were a real news organization, then at a minimum it would say on air that Pirro's remarks were unacceptable and communicate what it is doing to its audience."
We'll have more on this in subsequent posts. Meanwhile, watch Kurtz’s comments on Pirro’s absence below, from the March 17, 2019 Media Buzz.