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“Fox News Media and its top-rated host Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways, less than a week after parent company Fox Corp settled for $787.5 million a defamation lawsuit in which Carlson played a starring role. The outspoken Carlson embraced conservative issues and delivered his views with a style that made his prime-time show, ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’, the highest-rated cable news program in the key 25-to-54 age demographic on the most-watched U.S. cable news network.” Reuters
Here’s our coverage of the lawsuit between Dominion and Fox. The Flip Side
The right praises Carlson, and argues that his departure is a loss for Fox.
“Tucker normalized criticizing Wall Street and corporations from the right. That may not seem like much of a feat for younger conservatives, who came of age in the aftermath of the Great Recession. But for older Republicans, it was a huge deal—a rupture with ancient pieties. When he skewered Kevin McCarthy for sharing a plush D.C. apartment with pollster and ‘Google lobbyist’ Frank Luntz, Carlson wasn’t just exposing the gross swampiness of the future House speaker; he was also teaching a Reaganite audience to question corporate power…
“Carlson’s show was where you turned for serious critiques of corporate America, not least Big Pharma. He railed against America’s curious tolerance for direct-to-consumer drug advertising and the massive industry lobbying that made it possible…
“Then there was Carlson’s resistance against the uniparty’s drive to relentless escalation in Ukraine. Opposing the war meant questioning the military-industrial complex… Carlson’s was the only antiwar voice on cable news and one of a very few across all mass media.”
Sohrab Ahmari, American Conservative
“I doubt anyone will drive as many viewers or as much conversation as did Tucker. Tucker’s fall at Fox is almost certainly not just the result of whatever Fox is going through legally at the moment. It was also assisted by the left’s ad boycott against Tucker’s show, the largest audience in nightly cable television. A subscription service would eliminate any possibility of this…
“The biggest dynamic now in media and politics is still insiders vs. outsiders. And consistently Tucker Carlson is taking a more outsider view — on the Ukraine war, the opioid epidemic, immigration, public-health diktats, the intelligence community, and so on. His being shut out at Fox News will be seen as a reconsolidation for the Establishment, even on the Republican side. His likely re-emergence in the world of independent broadcasters will further consolidate that audience as well.”
Michael Brendan Dougherty, National Review
“Carlson brings a built-in audience of millions who would at least entertain him over the current front-runner, who will be seventy-eight when he takes office, or the Florida governor, about whom some donors have charisma concerns. He could certainly move the needle more than Nikki Haley, or any of the candidates hovering around 1 percent in polling…
“Carlson’s strength is appealing to that nationalist-populist strain of Republican voter, the kind that Joe Biden still refuses to acknowledge in towns such as East Palestine, Ohio. Carlson excels at giving his cable news megaphone to ‘the forgotten man’ — and in doing so has built a personal following rarely seen with cable infotainment hosts. It would be a formidable audience in an actual election — and, for better or worse, few politicians know the cultural and political landscape on the right [better] than Carlson.”
Stephen L. Miller, Spectator World
The left criticizes Carlson, and argues that Fox is unlikely to change.
The left criticizes Carlson, and argues that Fox is unlikely to change.
“Both the terseness of the network’s announcement and the timing of it — so shortly after Fox News reached a $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems in its defamation lawsuit — are difficult to ignore…
“Five years ago, it was what Carlson said about two women who’d said they had affairs with Donald Trump: Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels. ‘Two women approach Donald Trump and threaten to ruin his career and humiliate his family if he doesn’t give them money,’ Carlson summarized. ‘Now, that sounds like a classic case of extortion.’ Except, despite Carlson’s calling these facts ‘undisputed,’ McDougal had never approached Trump or his lawyer…
“McDougal filed a defamation suit, which ultimately was dismissed — but not before Fox was forced to defend itself by effectively admitting that you can’t take Carlson’s factual claims at face value… Carlson spooked advertisers by saying immigrants from poorer countries would make our country ‘dirtier’ — and then declining to back off that… Carlson has also, since 2021, been the most prominent proponent of a potentially more legally problematic effort: The one in which he strongly suggests that Jan. 6 figure Ray Epps was a government agent… Epps last month signaled possible legal action.”
Aaron Blake, Washington Post
“There’ve been signs for a while that Tucker Carlson Tonight was something of its own sphere of influence at the network, and it’s fair to speculate that network bigwigs didn’t necessarily love that their top prime-time star was a bit ungovernable… In March, for instance, Carlson’s show made much of some Jan. 6 security-camera footage it had obtained from Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy that purported to show that that day’s violent insurrection had actually been very peaceful…
“But Carlson was basically alone on the network in covering this so-called scoop. Few of his colleagues initially touched the story, and when Bret Baier finally covered it on Special Report the next day, he did so very skeptically… [But] it would be a mistake to presume that the network’s abrupt pivot away from Carlson means that the network is also planning to pivot away from the host’s vicious brand of populism. When it comes to the culture wars, the post-Dominion Fox News still isn’t likely to moderate its grievances.”
Justin Peters, Slate
“Other Fox hosts have seen their relevance rapidly diminish after being deprived of the network’s platform. Glenn Beck is still performing his 21st-century John Birch Society routine at his company Blaze Media, but he’s speaking to a much smaller niche than he once did. Bill O’Reilly, once the face of Fox, has a podcast and a string of best-selling books, but he’s no longer a particularly important cultural figure. Maybe Carlson will be different, though the text messages exposed by Dominion suggest an intense awareness of his own vulnerability.”
Michelle Goldberg, New York Times
