Multiple former Fox News staffers went public Tuesday with allegations that Fox Corp enforced COVID-19 vaccine mandates on its own employees, even as the network's primetime hosts hammered Dr. Anthony Fauci and government vaccine policies night after night.
Breanna Morello, a former Fox Corp producer, posted an internal company email on X that she said proved Fox required its New York City employees to get vaccinated or face consequences. She claimed the network offered her a $500 bonus to take the shot, and threatened to put her on unpaid leave when she refused. The Daily Caller reported that Morello, Tucker Carlson, and investigative journalist Lara Logan all leveled separate accusations against the network on the same day, ahead of Fauci's scheduled Senate testimony on Wednesday.
Fox News declined to comment on the record. The network has previously told the New York Times that its COVID policies reflected New York City's vaccine mandate at the time, a mandate that required all workers performing in-person work at city offices to show proof of at least one vaccine dose.
Morello, who has over a decade of experience in media and previously worked at Newsmax, ESPN Plus, and MLB Advanced Media, posted two separate messages on X Tuesday. In the first, she shared what she described as an internal Fox Corp email citing the New York City Mayor's office mandate.
The email, as reproduced in her post, stated plainly:
"Under the Mayor's mandate, beginning December 27, all workers in New York City who perform in-person work at an office location, including FOX employees, must show proof of receiving at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Workers will then have 45 days to show proof of their second dose (for Pfizer or Moderna vaccines)."
The email went further, telling employees that COVID-19 testing would no longer serve as an alternative to vaccination and that unvaccinated employees would be barred from Fox's New York offices. It applied to office, hybrid, and remote NYC-based workers alike.
Morello framed the mandate as part of a broader pattern she called dishonest. In her first post, she wrote that "Fox Corp is attempting to rewrite history by going after Anthony Fauci" and that "during Covid, Fox attempted to get me to comply with an illegal vaccine mandate." She added that Fox offered her a $500 bonus to get vaccinated and, when she declined, threatened unpaid leave, after having required her to relocate to New York City.
Fox News has long been a destination for conservative viewers frustrated with government overreach during the pandemic. But the gap between what the network broadcast and what it required of its own staff, if Morello's account is accurate, raises uncomfortable questions about institutional sincerity. Fox's editorial decisions around COVID vaccine safety have drawn scrutiny from conservatives before, including when the network declined to publish an op-ed by Sen. Ron Johnson on vaccine safety findings.
In a second post Tuesday night, Morello said she was "forced to resign because I stood for the truth." She added: "I warned executives that they were all wrong and being lied to. Now everyone is attempting to rewrite history."
WorldNetDaily reported as far back as August 2022 that Morello had previously stated she left Fox after the company mandated COVID-19 vaccines. Morello did not respond to the Daily Caller's request for comment before publication.
Tucker Carlson, who hosted Fox News' highest-rated primetime show during the pandemic, also weighed in. Carlson told the Daily Caller News Foundation that members of his staff had to create fake religious exemptions to get around the mandate. The Daily Caller paraphrased his account but did not publish a verbatim quote.
That detail, if true, suggests the internal pressure at Fox was severe enough that employees on one of the network's flagship shows felt they had no legitimate path to remain unvaccinated. Whether Fox Corp approved, rejected, or simply ignored those exemption requests is not addressed in the reporting.
Carlson's turbulent history with Fox has been well documented. His departure from the network led to a string of public disputes, and his post-Fox career has taken him further from the Republican establishment on several fronts.
Lara Logan, an investigative journalist who was a frequent Fox News guest, posted her own accusation on X the same day. Logan wrote: "Fox News cancelled me & cancelled my contract negotiations. I don't regret it one bit. There is only one truth."
Logan did not respond to the Daily Caller's request for comment. But her departure from Fox has its own backstory. The Hill reported in 2022 that Logan alleged she had been "pushed out" by the network after she drew sharp criticism for comparing Fauci to Nazi doctor Josef Mengele. Whether her contract cancellation was tied directly to her COVID vaccination stance or to those on-air remarks, or both, remains unclear from the available reporting.
The timing of all three former employees going public was not accidental. Fox News had been covering Fauci's personal diary entries in the days before his scheduled Wednesday Senate testimony, during which Fauci reportedly pleaded the Fifth. Morello explicitly accused the network of using the Fauci coverage to "rewrite history", positioning itself as a COVID skeptic after enforcing the same policies it criticized.
Fox's internal shake-ups have been a recurring story in recent years. Longtime personalities have departed for a variety of reasons, and the network's handling of COVID-era controversies has remained a sore point for conservative media figures who felt the company's corporate behavior contradicted its editorial voice.
Fox's only public defense, offered to the New York Times in 2021, was that the network's COVID policies reflected New York City's mandate at the time. That is technically accurate. The city did require proof of vaccination for in-person workers, and Fox's internal email explicitly cited the Mayor's order as the basis for its policy.
But compliance with a government mandate and enthusiastic enforcement are different things. Morello's claim that Fox offered a $500 bonus for vaccination goes beyond mere compliance, it suggests the company actively incentivized the shots. And Carlson's account of staffers fabricating religious exemptions, if accurate, points to a workplace where dissent was not just discouraged but functionally impossible without deception.
None of the former employees' specific claims have been independently verified. The internal email Morello posted has not been authenticated outside of her X post. Fox declined to comment on the record to the Daily Caller, and neither Morello nor Logan responded to requests for comment before publication. Carlson's credibility on Fox-related matters has been debated from multiple angles, though his account here aligns with the broader pattern described by Morello and Logan.
Several questions remain open. Fox has not addressed whether it offered vaccination bonuses, whether it placed employees on unpaid leave for refusing the shot, or how it handled religious exemption requests. Morello's characterization of the mandate as "illegal" is her own framing, the legal status of New York City's employer vaccine mandate is not resolved in any of the available reporting.
What is clear is that three people with direct ties to Fox News or Fox Corp, a producer, a primetime host, and a frequent on-air guest, all say the company's private behavior during COVID did not match its public posture. That charge, if it holds up, is not a minor embarrassment. It strikes at the core of whether a news organization that built its pandemic-era brand on challenging government overreach was willing to practice what it preached inside its own building.
Conservatives who stood their ground on vaccine mandates, who lost jobs, faced ostracism, and were told they were selfish, deserve to know whether the institutions that claimed to fight for them were doing the same behind closed doors.