Fox News has been preparing to deal with any fallout from any obviously racist or offensive comments made on-air for some time. | Mary Altaffer/AP Fox News addresses host’s response to racist comments

It was not a drill. Saturday night on Jesse Watters’ show was the moment Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott had instructed her top producers to be prepared for, in hopes of stemming the damage caused by any obviously racist or offensive comments made on-air.

Watters was discussing the controversy that had developed around old tweets by a recent New York Times editorial board hire, Sarah Jeong, with his “Watters World” guest, the comedian and social commentator Terrence K. Williams. During the conversation , Williams made a series of racist comments, criticizing The Times and Jeong.


“I don’t know if this lady is Chinese, Japanese or crazy-nese,” Williams said. “Something is wrong with this woman and I can’t believe they would hire her.”

Watters appeared to laugh off the statement and continued the conversation.

Soon after, Williams said, “There is something wrong with them fortune cookies that Ling Ling’s eating.” This time, Watters, while laughing, said, “Terrence, I think you now have gotten yourself in trouble,” and cut the segment off.

The episode came not long after a mid-June meeting in which Scott assembled her top producers and told them that they would be held accountable for any inflammatory comments made by hosts or panelists, and that it was their job to head off inappropriate remarks. Scott emphasized in the meeting that if something offensive was said on-air, the producers needed to get in the host’s ear and make sure it was addressed immediately.

In this case, that did not happen with Watters.

A Fox News spokesperson said on Monday that the issue was being addressed with the producers and talent involved. The spokesperson declined to offer further details on what that entailed.

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This isn’t the first time Watters has been in hot water over offensive statements about Asians. On Bill O’Reilly’s old show, Watters did ambush-style and man-in-the-street interview segments, and drew criticism in 2016 when he did a series of mocking interviews in New York’s Chinatown, playing on racist stereotypes. The episode prompted widespread condemnation, including from politicians like New York Mayor Bill de Blasio.

The meeting in June came after a series of offensive comments made on Fox News. At the time, a Fox News spokesperson said, “As the CEO of the network, Suzanne Scott regularly leads executive and editorial meetings and she expects accountability from her senior staff, which is what all good leaders do.”

The day before the meeting, former Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski had appeared on the network and belittled a migrant 10-year-old girl with Down syndrome who was reportedly separated from her mother at the southern border, saying, “Womp womp,” to her story. The Fox host did not say anything to address Lewandowski’s remarks.

Not long before that, conservative commentator Ann Coulter had appeared on Fox News as a guest and falsely alleged that the children at the border were “child actors.” Again, the host let the comment go unchallenged on air.

A few days after Scott’s meeting, though, when Democratic strategist Joel Payne argued on-air that the White House was using racist dog whistles, David Bossie, a Fox News contributor and former Trump deputy campaign manager, told Payne, who is black, “You’re out of your cotton-picking mind.”

In this case, host Ed Henry forcefully denounced Bossie’s statement on the air.

“I want to make clear Fox News and this show, myself, we don’t agree with that particular phrase. It was obviously offensive,” Henry said, following Bossie’s statements.

That was how Scott had instructed her staff to respond — and was probably the type of reaction she would have preferred from Watters.

Bossie, a Fox News contributor, was suspended for two weeks for his statement. Williams, however, is not a Fox News contributor and was just a guest on the show.