US television
Separation from ratings darling: Carlson is out of Fox News
Tucker Carlson will no longer moderate Fox News. photo
© Richard Drew/AP
Tucker Carlson was considered a guarantor for right-wing hate speech on US evening television. He was sure of good odds. Recently, however, explosive things came to light. Now his broadcaster Fox News is making a surprising statement.
Tremors on US television: The conservative broadcaster Fox News and his right-wing TV presenter Tucker Carlson will go their separate ways in the future. Carlson’s last broadcast was on Friday, Fox News announced on Monday and thanked the 53-year-old for his work.
Fox News did not give any reasons for the split. Carlson was one of the network’s most well-known personalities and always made headlines with his inflammatory comments. The separation is particularly explosive given the fact that the media group Fox has just reached an out-of-court settlement in the course of a lawsuit filed by the voting machine manufacturer Dominion for millions of euros in damages. Because Carlson was also in focus around the lawsuit.
Dominion had sued because Fox News had spread reports of alleged tampering with voting computers in the 2020 presidential election. Actually, a process should have started last week, in which more details from the inner workings of the media group would have come to light. But then both parties agreed on a payment of 787.5 million US dollars (around 714 million euros) from the Fox group to Dominion.
Carlson on Trump: “Hate him passionately”
Carlson and his top-rated daily evening show “Tucker Carlson Tonight” also took center stage in connection with the lawsuit. The talk show host appeared on his show as a supporter of former US President Donald Trump, who continues to spread the lie about election fraud to this day and does not admit defeat.
In the past few months, text messages from the moderator Carlson have finally become public. Carlson reportedly wrote to a staffer two months after the 2020 presidential election: “We’re very, very close to ignoring Trump most nights. I really can’t wait. I hate him passionately.”
The revelations further cast doubt on the credibility of presenter Carlson, who himself fueled the conspiracy theory of voter fraud on his show. Carlson is said to have repeatedly criticized the management of the station in the text messages.
Recently, there was also outrage that Carlson showed some selected images of the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021 in his program and, in line with Trump, claimed that only peaceful demonstrators were out and about at the time.
The Republican chairman of the US House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, had exclusively made thousands of hours of surveillance material available to the talk show host. Carlson then claimed on his show without any evidence that federal agents incited the violence.
Conspiracy theories, hate speech, false reports
Carlson’s weekday evening show attracted an average of three million viewers. In it he spread conspiracy theories and obvious false reports, and he agitated against minorities. He expressed racist, sexist and transphobic comments and was celebrated by his fans.
Although Carlson joined Fox News in 2009, it wasn’t until his evening show, which began running in 2017, that he became a star. It was primarily Carlson’s comments about Fox management that played a role in his departure from Fox, the Washington Post reported, citing an unnamed source.
It remains unclear how Carlson will continue after the separation. In his last broadcast on Friday, he did not announce his departure and did not say goodbye to the audience.
The right-wing broadcaster Newsmax reacted to the decision of its rival broadcaster and advertised for new audiences. “Fox News has been on its journey to becoming a mainstream medium for some time, and Tucker Carlson’s departure is a major milestone in that quest,” the network, founded in 2014, said on Monday. Millions of viewers who liked the old Fox News have already switched to Newsmax. Carlson’s departure will reinforce this trend.