said on Thursday that it had parted ways with Maria Bartiromo, then her lawyer pushed back on Friday and said she was not fired from. The split was visible almost at once: Bartiromo’s bio and show pages disappeared from Fox’s websites, and her final episode of her daily Fox Business show aired the same day.
The clash over what happened is now the story. Bryan Freedman said reports that Bartiromo was fired or was no longer an employee were “absolutely and unequivocally false,” and he added that the team had “the receipts and witnesses” to back that up. A Media representative said the company’s press release about parting ways with Bartiromo “speaks for itself.”
That leaves a simple but unresolved question: if Fox has ended the relationship, what, exactly, did it mean by parting ways? On Friday, the same titles and graphics used for Bartiromo’s programming still appeared on air, but without her name in them. That detail matters because Bartiromo had been with Fox for more than 12 years and had become one of the network’s most familiar faces, hosting Mornings with Maria on weekdays, Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street on Fridays and Sunday Morning Futures on Channel.
Her departure lands in the middle of a larger and messier record. The Status media industry newsletter reported Thursday night that she was fired after she had shared with the White House guidance from Fox management about claims made by Donald Trump about recent elections. Later Thursday, and reported that she was dismissed after sharing internal Fox communications with the White House. NBC News has not verified those reports.
Bartiromo’s name has long carried weight inside Fox and beyond it. Media had promoted her shows as ratings winners for years, and she had joined Fox Business in 2014 after a 21-year career at CNBC, where she hosted Closing Bell. She also grew close to Donald Trump, who appointed her to the board of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, and the center’s website still listed her as a board member as of Friday afternoon.
Her exit also revives older fights around her work. In 2021, her comments and shows were cited as exhibits in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against, which accused the network of knowingly broadcasting false claims that Dominion rigged the 2020 presidential election. Fox later agreed to pay $787 million in a settlement with Dominion. Smartmatic also sued Fox in 2021 and named Bartiromo as a co-defendant, and that case is still ongoing.
For now, Fox has said it has moved on, while Bartiromo’s lawyer says the firing reports are false. Until one side explains the terms in plain language, the public record says only that a long Fox run ended suddenly and that the fight over how it ended is still very much alive.
