Why Fox 10 Phoenix information anchor Kari Lake has been off the air these days

Fox 10 newscaster Kari Lake tweeted Thursday that her recent absence from the air wasn’t due to being “fired, demoted, reprimanded, etc.”

Instead, she’s been taking time off for personal reasons, Lake said in the tweet.

Given some of Lake’s previous controversies and her past support for fringe conspiracy theories on social media, it’s understandable that she might want to purify the air.

Lake tweeted a debunked COVID-19 video in 2020 and was temporarily off the air after accidentally pronouncing the F-word during a Facebook Live event in 2019.

She explained her absence in the tweet posted on Thursday afternoon.

“I needed a bit of privacy at this point.”

“I’ve spent much of my life in public because of my job, so I’m sure it seems strange that I kept quiet,” she tweeted. “But the truth is, I needed a bit of privacy at this point. And while I have absolutely no desire to publicly address my absence, the constant inquiries and now some reporters with a list of questions that have very little to do with my absence have only tried to damage my reputation or to harm me personally hurt leads me to address my absence now.

“Since the beginning of January I have been on health leave with FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act). I have not been fired, demoted, reprimanded, etc. I have been with Fox for over 20 years with a good reputation. “

Lake tweeted about her absence and that she was joining Gab

Lake also tweeted Thursday that she joined Gab, the social media platform many Parler users have come to since Parler shut down. Lake also had a Parler account. (Full disclosure: Me too, along with many journalists, for research purposes.)

Her testimony did not detail who pointed out she was gone on disciplinary grounds. However, Phoenix New Times reporter Erasmus Baxter tweeted that he asked Lake about her absence, along with a list of questions, “about her sharing of conspiracy theories and her presence on a Nazi-loved social media site.”

Lake told Baxter she would reply, he tweeted. Instead, she wrote that the questions were “a personal attack”.

In 2019, she and co-host John Hook spoke about how Fox 10 management asked her to remove a reference to Parler from her brand’s Twitter account. Unaware that a Facebook Live event they attended started early, she said the F-word and despised the Phoenix New Times. “(Expletively) them,” she said in the video. “It’s 20 year old drugs. That’s a rag for selling marijuana.”

Recently, Lake shared misinformation about the first change

Lake tweeted and posted on Parler about alleged violations of First Amendment rights after Twitter and Facebook suspended Donald Trump’s accounts for posting misleading information and lies after his words inspired the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

“The purge of the President and many others on Twitter, FB, and other social media accounts is worrying,” she tweeted on Jan. 8. “The first change is under attack.”

This is not a First Amendment problem. These are private companies with their own standards and requirements. See often retweet the edgeconservative views on Twitter and earlier on Parler. Judging from the replies to her tweet about her absence on Thursday, her viewers share many of these views. Many sent her good wishes.

“You are literally the only reporter in Arizona I trust,” replied one person. “I hope everything goes well and you will get in touch with us soon.”

Contact Goodykoontz at [email protected]. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: @goodyk.

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