Fox News Executive Editor and Executive Vice President John Moody, who’s been with the news network since 1996, has retired just one month after the network yanked a controversial column he penned about diversity in the Olympics.
A Fox News spokesperson confirmed Moody’s retirement Friday, telling TPM: “John Moody has retired from Fox News.”
A person close to the situation told CNN that Moody was already planning to retire before the backlash over his column, which slammed the U.S. Olympics for its efforts to attract a diverse group of athletes for the Winter Games.
“Unless it’s changed overnight, the motto of the Olympics, since 1894, has been ‘Faster, Higher, Stronger.’ It appears the U.S. Olympic Committee would like to change that to ‘Darker, Gayer, Different.’ If your goal is to win medals, that won’t work,” Moody wrote in the column that was deleted after it drew outrage early last month.
A network spokesperson said it was removed from the site because it did not “reflect the views or values” of Fox News.
At the time, a Fox News insider told TPM that the column was published without going through the “proper vetting process” because of Moody’s standing at the company.
“In terms of John Moody, he has zero editorial oversight on any platform, his title is a formality and he hasn’t performed that function for years,” the network insider told TPM last month.
