Greg Gutfeld on Thursday said he and other hosts of Fox News’s “The Five” should be back in the studio and questioned whether they are being hypocritical by calling for the nation to reopen as they film the program at home.
“I will say this, and then I will shut up. We are hypocrites when we are giving our own advice on this,” Gutfeld, who has called for more of a return to pre-COVID-19 norms as vaccinations have risen, said at the opening of his discussion on the Thursday episode of “The Five.”
Gutfeld also questioned whether his cable network’s legal department was the reason why the co-hosts weren’t taping the show together in the studio.
“Let’s get back in the studio. There is no science,” he said. “We have the vaccines, and we have the rapid testing. There is no reason for us to be doing this all the time. This is legal B.S., which is the case for everything in life. We are controlled by lawyers. Sorry.”
Fox News did not comment on questions from The Hill about Gutfeld’s comments.
Gutfeld and the rest of the show’s current cast, Juan Williams, Jesse Watters, Dana Perino and Dagen McDowell, tape the panel talk show from separate locations. Williams is also a columnist for The Hill.
Many news shows, along with other television programs, began working virtually in March of last year. In April 2020, CNN President Jeff Zucker said 10 percent of his organization’s workforce were still working in the offices.
Some Fox News employees were still working in the studio in October, including on-air talent, but were told to start working remotely after several cases of COVID-19 were confirmed at the network.
Anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, as well as “The Five” co-hosts Williams and Perino, were exposed to COVID-19 on a charter flight from the final presidential debate in Tennessee.
A Fox Corp. spokesperson did not answer questions about how many Fox News employees are currently working remotely or when they will be coming back to the office. The spokesperson also would not say if Fox employees would need to be vaccinated before returning to work.
However, in a March 16 memo, Lachlan Murdoch, the CEO and executive chairman of Fox Corp., said employees can expect to be back in newsrooms early this fall.
“While we spent the last year working in new, and often remote, ways, you have continued to prioritize caring for each other,” Murdoch wrote. “Similarly, the health and safety of our workforce has remained my priority. With that as the guiding principle, we are deferring our next possible phase one reopening date to no earlier than September 7, immediately after Labor Day.”
CNN did not immediately respond to questions from The Hill about which of its shows are still being hosted virtually or how many of its staffers are working from home.
However, in a memo also sent in mid-March, CNN President Jeff Zucker told the network’s staff they will begin returning to the network’s Atlanta office on Aug. 1 and its Los Angeles office on Sept. 1.