We don’t yet know why he and Fox abruptly parted ways, but his fast-and-loose style and huge stature were a toxic mix in our new post-Dominion era.
We don’t yet know precisely why Tucker Carlson and Fox News abruptly parted ways on Monday. But 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.
Fox in 2021 canceled the highest-rated Fox Business Network show — that of perhaps its most far-flung election truther, Lou Dobbs — just a day after another voting technology company filed suit. Now it’s cutting ties with its highest-rated Fox News host less than a week after it had to fork over a huge amount of money over its shoddy journalism.
A few days after the Dominion settlement, contributing columnist Jim Geraghty ventured this “hard lesson” over at the National Review: “It is unlikely that networks like Fox News can afford to keep loose-cannon hosts anymore.”
Regardless of the reasons for his departure, it’s very clear that Carlson fits that description.
Carlson was clearly the most powerful Fox host and likely the most powerful TV journalist in the country. And he used that power to flout journalistic standards and operate in ways that created demonstrable problems for Fox — and could create problems in a future environment created by the Dominion v. Fox suit.
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. Going on national TV and floating the idea that someone had committed a crime would seem to demand a more careful approach, but it wasn’t present.
Around the time of those 2018 comments, Carlson spooked advertisers by saying immigrants from poorer countries would make our country “dirtier” — and then declining to back off that.
