Santita Jackson Hire No Fix for Fox News' Black Problem

Channel must revamp coverage if it wants to attract black eyeballs.

Word trickled out earlier this week that the conservative-leaning Fox News Channel has hired Chicago radio host, Santita Jackson, the eldest daughter of civil rights leader the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

Jackson, who made her on-air debut for Fox News this morning on a Fox & Friends political panel, will certainly strengthen the network’s claim to balanced coverage.

In the four years since the network’s most prominent liberal Alan Colmes was dropped from the title role of “Hannity and Colmes,” Fox News has rightly come under fire for its seeming lack of an honest effort to fulfill the channel’s slogan of providing “fair and balanced” news coverage.

The hire is the second prominent liberal voice the network has brought in during recent months. Much to the chagrin of some of the network’s conservative viewers, Fox News brought in gay rights activist Sally Kohn earlier this year.

Jackson’s voice will be one of the channel’s few left leaning black voices on-air.

That’s not to say the channel’s commentator circuit completely lacks faces of color. Former NPR reporter and black conservative Juan Williams has remained the network’s most prominent voice, at times filling in for network darling Bill O’Reilly. Black commentators such as Lauren Green, Angela McGlowan remain regulars while Wendell Goler serves as one of the network’s top political correspondents.

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