Veteran journalist Lara Logan will no longer be represented by talent agency UTA in the aftermath of her Nov. 29 comments where she compared Dr. Anthony Fauci to the notorious Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele, who performed medical experiments at the Auschwitz death camps.
Logan made the remarks while appearing as a guest on a program hosted Pete Hegseth, one of the many Fox News commentators who has been critical of coronavirus vaccine mandates and the actions of Fauci, the U.S. government’s top infectious disease expert and chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden.
Logan said vaccine and masks mandates were unnecessary, adding that “what people say to me, is that (Dr. Fauci) doesn’t represent science to them. He represents Josef Mengele – the Nazi doctor who did experiments on Jews during the second World War and in the concentration camps.”
UTA spokesman Seth Oster confirmed that the agency dropped Logan following her comments on Fox News. The news was first reported by Mediaite.
A representative of Fox News declined to comment.
Although Logan is not a Fox News employee, she does appear on the channel’s streaming service Fox Nation in a documentary series “Lara Logan Has No Agenda,” which is supplied by an outside company, Warm Springs Productions. The company has produced 27 episodes of the series which remain on Fox Nation and there are no plans to make more.
Being unofficially banished from Fox News and dropped by her representative will make it difficult for Logan to find another established platform for her work. She did not respond to a request for comment.
In a December 2019 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Logan said she had no intention of becoming an “opinion person” on Fox News. However, after her streaming series was launched, she did appear on “Hannity” and other programs where she expressed her views, which were largely criticisms of the mainstream media.
Logan, 50, was a breakout star correspondent at CBS News for her war coverage in Iraq and Afghanistan. She arrived at Fox Nation a year after parting ways with her former employer following a serious mistake in a “60 Minutes” report that questioned the Obama administration’s response to the September 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.
The story led to Logan taking a leave of absence from CBS. Her contract was not renewed in September 2018, a stunning downfall for an award-winning journalist and once sought-after TV news talent.
While Logan was not paid for her Fox News appearances, her remarks have apparently kept her off the channel, which typically tolerates frequent and harsh criticism of Fauci from its commentators.
Last month, Jesse Watters, a co-host of “The Five,” told an audience at a right-wing political conference that they should confront Fauci with questions about the origins of the coronavirus. Watters said a query asserting that the virus came from a Chinese lab would be “the kill shot” and that the impact of the confrontation would leave Fauci dead.
Fauci, who has spoken of frequent death threats to himself and his family, said the comments were irresponsible and called for Watters firing.
Fox News did not apologize, saying Watters was suggesting only that Fauci needed to be subjected to tougher questioning by the media. On Jan. 10, the channel announced Watters will have his own daily 7 p.m. ET program starting Jan. 24.
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