Background
Starnes grew up in southeastern Louisiana, and started working at a local weekly newspaper as a teenager.
Starnes grew up in southeastern Louisiana, and started working at a local weekly newspaper as a teenager.
He attended Georgia State University and/or Lee University, where he worked at the campus radio station and did some reporting for a local Atlanta legal newspaper.
He has appeared regularly on such television series as Fox and Friends and Hannity. He subsequently worked for the Chattanooga Times Free Press, Blue Ridge News Observer, and the Baptist Press, followed by a stint as communications director for Union University in Jackson, Tennessee. He then moved into talk radio, starting with WTJS in Jackson.
After improving ratings there, he moved to KFBK in Sacramento, California.
While recovering from open heart surgery in 2005 (which was covered by the station) he got a job offer from FOX. Starnes released his first book in early 2009, They Popped My Hood and Foundation Gravy on the Dipstick, which recounts how he lost a significant amount of weight and his open heart surgery. Starnes" strongly conservative views, which he likes "to spice it up a little bit" to generate reader interest, have also generated controversy.
In 2003, he was accused of misquoting then-United States. Education Secretary, Rod Paige, which led to Starnes" subsequent firing by Baptist Press. In 2013, he became the focus of controversy when Cable News Network, among other news outlets, leveled accusations of racism against Starnes.
Starnes denied the accusations.
In 2015, he courted controversy for his response to the film American Sniper, stating of the main character: "Jesus would tell that God-fearing, red-blooded American sniper, ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant.’ "
In the aftermath of the 2015 Charleston church shooting, he remarked that removing symbols of the old Confederacy from public places was "cultural cleansing.".