Could Megan Kelly's "Blackface" Statement End Her TV's Anchor Career?

TV presenter Megyn Kelly has been a mainstay of US cable and network news for more than a decade - but now the career of one of the country's best-paid anchors is in doubt.

NBC News announced on Friday that the Megyn Kelly Today show was being cancelled and her co-anchors would replace her in episodes airing next week.

The move comes after she was heavily criticised for defending Halloween costume "blackface" during a segment on her morning show earlier this week.

"But what is racist?" she asked an all-white panel on Monday during a discussion about a university crackdown on offensive costumes.

"Because you do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface on Halloween, or a black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween. Back when I was a kid that was OK, as long as you were dressing up as, like, a character."

She then defended a reality television show star who drew ire last year for darkening her skin and donning an afro wig to dress as Diana Ross.

"Who doesn't love Diana Ross? She wants to look like Diana Ross for one day? I don't know how that got racist on Halloween," Kelly said.

The backlash was immediate: the anchor was accused of being tone-deaf and ignorant to racial sensitivities.

Incredulous viewers shared videos of the segment on social media, pointing out the well-known history of degrading depictions of African-Americans using blackface throughout US history.

Kelly apologised to NBC staff internally and then publicly to viewers on the Wednesday edition of her show.

But questions are being asked about whether the career of one of the highest paid news stars in the US can, or should, recover.

Kelly joined Fox News in 2004, with little previous experience as a reporter.

Born in 1970 in upstate New York, Kelly was the youngest of three children of a college professor father and a mother who worked as a nurse at a veterans' hospital.

A keen cheerleader in high school, she went on to study political science at Syracuse University before qualifying as a lawyer in Albany, New York and practising as an associate in a law firm for about a decade.

She then decided to switch careers and made a demo tape that got her work as a reporter for a local ABC affiliate in Washington DC, before bagging a job at Fox News about a year later.

Jonathan Klein, former head of CNN US, told the New York Times in 2015 he regretted not signing her to his own network : "If you'd have asked me who was the one talent you'd want to have from somewhere else, from another network, I would have said - and did - Megyn Kelly."

Could a return to Fox be on the cards? In a short statement on Thursday, the network rebuffed the rumour, stating: "We are extremely happy with our entire line-up."

SOURCE ARTICLE: BBC NEWS