Fox News Fires Bob Beckel Again—This Time for ‘Making Insensitive Remark’ to Black Employee
ON-AGAIN-OFF-AGAIN
Was previously fired in 2015 for holding the network “hostage” with his “personal issues.”
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Fox News has fired Bob Beckel again, announcing Friday that his contract had been terminated “for making an insensitive remark to an African-American employee.” Beckel had been one of the five hosts on Fox’s prime-time gabfest The Five. According to lawyer representing a black IT worker at Fox who was allegedly the butt of Beckel’s remark: “Mr. Beckel stormed out of his office when our client, a Black IT employee came to service his computer, telling our client that he was leaving his office because he is Black. To make matters worse, after our client lodged a complaint about Mr. Beckel's racist behavior, Mr. Beckel, in front of Chief Human Resource Officer Kevin Lord, attempted to intimidate our client and persuade him to withdraw his complaint.” The lawyer alleges that Fox leaked the story and fired Beckel to get ahead of the complaint. Fox News previously fired Beckel in 2015 amid his recuperation from back surgery. Initially, the network described the split as amicable, but within hours then-executive Bill Shine released a new statement lambasting Beckel for having taken “tremendous advantage of our generosity, empathy, and goodwill” and that he’d held the network “hostage” with his personal issues. Beckel then joined CNN as a contributor before re-joining The Five this year.
