Carlson & Fox News: Forgive Me and Tell Me What I Mean, or How I Met Your Oasis: After 9 Years of Fox News, My Pillow
“This is a step towards accountability for the election lies and baseless conspiracy theories spread by Fox News, something I witnessed firsthand,” said Grossberg in the statement about Carlson’s ouster. “This is some justice for the American people and for Fox News viewers who’ve been manipulated and lied to for years, all in an attempt to boost the channel’s ratings and revenue.”
Carlson’s last day hosting his show was April 21, according to Fox. After Fox issued its statement on Monday morning, the network promotion of an interview between Carlson and Ramaswamy was still going on.
“Sidney Powell is lying by the way,” Carlson told fellow host Laura Ingraham on Nov. 18, 2020, referring to the infamous election conspiracy theorist. I caught her. It’s insane.” What’s true of Carlson holds for many others at the network, up to and including Murdoch, according to evidence collected by Dominion Voting Systems in a brief it filed as part of its lawsuit against Fox News, which last week resulted in a $787.5 million settlement. “Terrible stuff damaging everybody, I fear,” Murdoch told the network’s chief executive, Suzanne Scott. But the network fired or chastised journalists who reported the truth.
There is a clear divide between what Carlson said on air and what he said behind the scenes. He brought up doubts about the lack of evidence for assertions made by Sidney Powell, a key Trump ally. In January 2021, however, he hosted a leading advertiser, My Pillow founder Mike Lindell, who repeated the false claims once more. Carlson called Powell a degrading term in his private communications to a colleague.
In a lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York, Grossberg accused Carlson and Fox of sexism and harassment, alleging that his show’s workplace was replete with examples of misogyny. Her lawsuit claims, among other things, that mocked-up photographic images depicted then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “in a bathing suit revealing her cleavage” and that staffers were polled — on two separate occasions — on which of two female candidates for Michigan governor they would rather have sex with.
The network stuck by him — as did Lachlan Murdoch, chief executive of the Fox Corporation — after Mr. Carlson claimed that immigration had made America “poor and dirtier.” He seemed to shrug off his on-air popularization of a racist conspiracy theory known as the “great replacement,” along with revelations that he was a prodigious airer of the company’s own dirty laundry. When Russia invaded Ukraine, Mr. Carlson’s show frequently promoted the Kremlin’s point of view, attacking U.S. sanctions and blaming the conflict on American designs for expanding NATO.
Carlson had more controversy than most cable news stars could hope to survive. In July 2020, his top writer was forced out after it was discovered he had posted racist, sexist and homophobic commentaries. Last month, the Daily Dot found that one of Carlson’s staffers had the habit of “liking” posts from VDare, a site for white nationalists.
His work on his show — accentuated by specials on the streaming service — also sparked a firestorm by seeking to exonerate people who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, siege of the U.S. Capitol as civic-minded people who were being politically persecuted.
Remembering J. C. Murdoch: When the Fox News came to his sense of humor in the naivety-charged telephone hacking scandal
That contributed to the decision by several prominent Fox figures to depart — including Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace and conservative commentators Steve Hayes and Jonah Goldberg.
The drought of premium advertisers on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” — driven away by boycotts targeting his more racist and inflammatory segments — did not seem to dent his standing within the network, so long as the audience stuck around. It was not uncommon for Mr. Carlson to have an image of being close to the Murdoch family.
Before Mr. Carlson became a populist pundit and media figure, the nativist insurgency that splintered the GOP was traced by his conversion from libertarian to populist. But he prospered in tandem with Mr. Trump’s presidency, as the New York real estate tycoon made frank nativism and seething cultural resentment the primary touchstones of conservative politics.
Murdoch stopped by my small office at The Wall Street Journal to see me as a columnist and editor. He was back in the UK after giving testimony to a parliamentary committee investigating the phone-hacking scandal by his British tabloids. One of the world’s biggest selling English-language newspapers, News of the World, was closed because of the scandal.
I don’t remember many specifics about the conversation — Murdoch loved to talk politics and policy with his journalists, sometimes by taking us to lunch at the Lamb’s Club in Midtown Manhattan — but I do remember the gist of what he said about the fiasco: Never put anything in an email. His private takeaway, it seemed, wasn’t to require his companies to adhere to high ethical standards. It was to leave no trace that investigators might use for evidence against him, his family or his favorite lieutenants.