What’s extra, the settlement didn’t embrace a requirement for Fox Information to publicly apologize or retract the numerous false and damaging statements it broadcast about Dominion from November 2020 by way of January 2021. (A Dominion spokesperson supplied “nothing on that from us proper now” after we requested on Monday whether or not the settlement included a personnel element.)
On Friday, Carlson completed his program by sharing pizza with a delivery driver who helped catch an alleged car thief. “That’s it for us for the week,” mentioned Carlson. “We’ll be again — by the best way, the complete episode of ‘Let Them Eat Bugs,’ not fairly pretty much as good as pizza, streaming now on Fox Nation. … We’ll be again on Monday.”
However, no, Carlson is out earlier than internet hosting one other episode. “Tucker Carlson Tonight” was for years one of many top-rated exhibits in cable tv, and if there’s one factor that Fox Information cares about — as additionally evidenced by the inner communications laid naked by Dominion’s lawsuit — it’s rankings. The truth that Carlson’s final present aired with out a sign-off to viewers means that Fox Information didn’t belief Carlson with its airwaves below modified circumstances.
But the community trusted him for 14 years, a span through which Carlson, a veteran of CNN and MSNBC, littered the airwaves with conspiracy theories and racist rhetoric. So necessary was Carlson’s oeuvre that in 2021, Fox Information inked a deal with him to do thrice-weekly interviews on streaming platform Fox Nation, plus documentaries below the title “Tucker Carlson Originals.” He was Fox Information’s franchise persona, following a disjointed path to prominence. Carlson joined Fox as a contributor in 2009 and later moved as much as a weekend co-host on the risible “Fox & Pals” franchise; he as soon as fell asleep on air. When a night slot opened up in 2016, Carlson grabbed the chance, breaking out as he hammered critics — together with the Erik Wemple Weblog — and left-leaning sorts in pugilistic segments that helped mildew an viewers.
Carlson’s hammering wasn’t restricted to exterior critics. Court docket filings within the Dominion litigation uncovered lots of Carlson’s candid ideas about others at Fox Information, together with executives. “We commit our lives to constructing an viewers and so they let Chris Wallace and Leland f—ing Vittert wreck it,” Carlson said in one exchange with a colleague. Such feedback about administration “performed a job” in Carlson’s ouster, in accordance with reporting by Publish colleagues Jeremy Barr and Sarah Ellison.
Who at Fox Information ever — ever — would have supposed that the man prepared to smear others willy-nilly would equally bash his colleagues?
There’s different ugliness. A lower-profile lawsuit, filed in March by Abby Grossberg, a former Fox Information worker who labored on “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” alleged violations of pay-equity legal guidelines, gender discrimination and retaliation, amongst different points. Her criticism paints a dire image of the work atmosphere below Carlson. As head of reserving for Carlson’s present, Grossberg endured “a piece atmosphere that subjugates girls primarily based on vile sexist stereotypes, typecasts non secular minorities and belittled their traditions, and demonstrates little to no regard for these affected by psychological sickness,” reads the criticism. Staffers on Carlson’s present, the complaint says, usually engaged in misogynistic banter about girls within the information: “In these discussions, no lady, whether or not she was a Republican politician or a feminine staffer at Fox Information, was secure from abruptly changing into the goal of sexist, demeaning feedback.” (A Fox assertion says the claims are “riddled with false allegations.”)
Because the Erik Wemple Weblog has identified, Carlson’s historical past of misogynistic feedback dates again a few years — together with the time that he referred to as journalist Joan Walsh a “c—.”
And as a Fox Information host, Carlson’s on-air pronouncements have been replete with racism, sexism and an undisguised hatred for individuals with whom he disagrees. In his quest for rankings and fame, Carlson proved prepared to run over in any other case powerless individuals, such because the Maine-based freelance journalists assigned to supply a narrative about him, or the pro-Trump man whom Carlson wrapped in his conspiracy theory about the FBI and the Jan. 6, 2021, protests. Carlson additionally menaced colleagues on the community, as New York Instances reporter Nicholas Confessore documented in a year-long investigation.
Evidently Fox Information was superb with Carlson’s vicious, usually baseless, assaults, so long as they have been directed elsewhere. As soon as they began touchdown nearer to dwelling, community leaders took one other have a look at the horrible particular person on their payroll.
