Parting Ways: The Exit of Tucker Carlson

 

Fox News is like a ship that sails through stormy political waters - sometimes they have to throw a few passengers overboard to keep the ship afloat.

 

One can actually compare Fox News to a revolving door for hosts - one minute the revered host is the thorn in the side of Democrats, the next minute they are getting kicked to the curb faster than a cat with its tail on fire. Six years ago, the most popular cable TV host had a show on Fox News during prime time. He was loud, had strong opinions, and made a lot of noise. This made him a pain for two Democratic governments. Liberals hated him, and conservatives watched him talk about things like political correctness and other liberal dogmas. But after the New York Times reported that Fox had paid $13 million to settle lawsuits from five women who said he had sexually harassed them or acted inappropriately, and after more than 50 advertisers dropped his show, the network threw Bill O'Reilly out on the street. Mr. O'Reilly has always denied the accusations against him.

History doesn't repeat itself, but it sometimes sounds like it did before. Fox fired Tucker Carlson on April 24. This was almost six years to the day after it fired Bill O'Reilly. Carlson is currently the most popular show on cable TV. He also angers liberals and enjoys making fun of everything "woke," which is the new word for political correctness. Fox is also being sued by one of Tucker Carlson's former editors, Abby Grossberg, who says that the network and Mr. Carlson's staff are sexist and anti-Semitic. Fox strongly denies these claims.

Mr. Carlson has never been a typical nationalist. His stepmother is the owner of a fortune in frozen foods, and he has a home studio in Maine, where he has spent every summer of his life. In the beginning of his career, he worked at the left-leaning PBS and MSNBC. Mr. O'Reilly acted like the guy next to you at a bar when he was angry, while Mr. Carlson's blue blazers, repp ties, and confident tone made him seem like the epitome of an old-school, establishment East Coast Republican.

That species is just as rare as the blue whale, and Mr. Carlson's political ideas are much more complicated and hard-edged. He has praised Hungary's authoritarian leader Viktor Orban, like many on the new right. He has said that Democrats want to replace the current voters with new, more obedient ones from the Third World. This is an idea that the hard right likes. He has minimized and skewed the attack on the Capitol by Trump fans on January 6, 2021, by showing edited video and saying the rioters were meek tourists. And he always backed Mr. Trump. Just two weeks ago, he did a full show with an interview with him.

But when he was alone, he didn't feel nearly as good about Mr. Trump. Just two days before the riot in the Capitol, he sent a text to his manager in which he said he hated Trump very much. Mr. Carlson says that the former president's best skill is ruining things. He said that Trump is the undisputed world champion of that kind of power and that, if America plays it wrong, he could easily destroy the country. He told another coworker that their TV station is almost at the point where they can ignore Trump most nights, and he can't wait for that to happen.  Mr. Carlson also said some interesting things about how Fox is run. He said that the people in charge of the TV station are hurting its reputation. It's not clear yet if these kinds of comments made him leave.

 

Severed Heads: Fox News Cleaning House

These texts came out as part of a defamation case filed by Dominion Voting Systems. This company makes voting machines that Fox hosts and guests falsely said switched votes and were easy to hack. Fox decided to pay $787.5 million to settle the case on April 18, just as the trial was about to start. This was one of the largest payouts for defamation ever.

Some people see Mr. Carlson's abrupt departure—he and his executive producer Justin Wells, who is also leaving, didn't know about it until Monday morning—as a tacit admission of wrongdoing, meant to reassure investors and stop an advertising exodus like the one that hit Mr. O'Reilly's show before it happened. Just a few days earlier, Fox fired Dan Bongino, another host who backed Trump. Maybe Fox is cleaning house and needs a couple of severed heads to remind its workers of the difference between pandering to its base, which both Fox and MSNBC's partisan political shows do often, and actually defaming people or companies that could sue. Maybe it had something to do with Ms. Grossberg's case.

Whatever the reason, Mr. Carlson's exit, like Mr. O'Reilly's, shows that Fox News is not tied to its stars, even though it may help them become famous. When their actions get too expensive or embarrassing, they are kicked out, no matter how much it costs. For example, when the news came out, Fox's stock dropped sharply, but the company's choice to fire Carlson was final, no matter what. But leftists and other Democrats who are always happy when something like this happens can also learn something from this one too. They danced on the grave of Mr. O'Reilly, and Mr. Carlson popped up to take his place. They may be happy about Mr. Carlson leaving today, but Fox News is still going strong. It's still the most-watched cable network in the country, and new competitors on the left  haven't been able to beat it. Fox won't have to look for long to find someone else to get its fans excited and continue to make liberals in America mad.

 

 

Notes

 

Darcy, O., & Cohen, M. (2023, April 25). Tucker Carlson out at Fox News. Retrieved from CNN Business: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/24/media/tucker-carlson-fox-news/index.html

Folkenflik, D., & Yang, M. (2023, April 18). Fox News Settles Blockbuster Defamation Lawsuit With Dominion Voting Systems. Retrieved from NPR: https://www.npr.org/2023/04/18/1170339114/fox-news-settles-blockbuster-defamation-lawsuit-with-dominion-voting-systems

Garber, M. (2017, April 19). Why Was Bill O'Reilly Really Fired? Retrieved from The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2017/04/why-was-bill-oreilly-really-fired/523614/

Jamerson, S. (2022, May 23). Fox News host Tucker Carlson has a dangerous friend in Hungary’s Viktor Orban. Retrieved from Media Matters: https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/fox-news-host-tucker-carlson-has-dangerous-friend-hungarys-viktor-orban

Joyella, M. (2023, April 21). Dan Bongino Said Leaving Fox News Would Lead To Conspiracy Theories. He Was Right. Retrieved from Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/markjoyella/2023/04/21/dan-bongino-said-leaving-fox-news-would-lead-to-conspiracy-theories-he-was-right/?sh=7bc408f679ce

Rabinowitz , H., Lybrand, H., & Cohen, M. (2023, March 8). What to Know About the Tucker Carlson January 6 Footage. Retrieved from CNN Politics: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/06/politics/tucker-carlson-january-6-footage/index.html

Rizzo, L. (2023, April 24). Tucker Carlson Leaves Fox News in Wake of Dominion Defamation Settlement. Retrieved from CNBC: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/24/tucker-carlson-leaves-fox-news-in-wake-of-dominion-defamation-settlement.html

The Economist. (2023, April 24). All Tuckered out. Retrieved from https://www.economist.com/united-states/2023/04/24/fox-news-shows-that-not-even-tucker-carlson-is-bigger-than-the-network