Fox News hasn’t explained to their audience why the No. 1 show on cable television, Tucker Carlson Tonight, is canceled. However, several news stories have leaked out purporting to explain the real reason why. One was that Carlson had used the “c-word” about a female executive at Fox News, and had expressed displeasure that Fox’s lawyers had managed to redact this from the discovery of the Dominion trial. The Times described it as “a catalyst” for the decision to fire him. But that can’t be the reason, as Carlson had been deposed for this last summer, likely months after Fox’s executives and lawyers had reviewed the material themselves.
The Times also had an original angle in their story on Carlson’s firing. It reads this way:
In video obtained by The Times, for instance, Mr. Carlson is shown off camera discussing his “postmenopausal fans” and whether they will approve of how he looks on the air. In another video, he is overheard describing a woman he finds “yummy.”
Put aside the very odd expression “Carlson is shown off camera” — which is likely an awkward way of describing a video of him “off air,” either before or after his show finished taping, or during a commercial break. Instead focus on that first phrase: “In video obtained by The Times.”
Are there just random videos of the off-air parts of Tucker Carlson Tonight just waiting to be discovered by the New York Times? Perhaps these tapes are under highway overpasses.
No, the Times obviously got this from Fox’s PR people, perhaps with help from the very office of the executive who was the subject of Carlson’s “c-word” text.
I just find it a strange strategy. It’s not a shock that News Corp assets would get some of the inside line. Or that the most pro-Ukraine commentator in Australia would be fed the line that it was Tucker’s position on Ukraine that did him in. But Fox’s PR problem is that it has gone “soft” somehow by firing Tucker Carlson, its most original, highly rated, and taboo-breaking host. Now it’s trying to dirty up Tucker while he legally can’t talk about Fox, by turning toward the New York Times?