The decision to fire Tucker Carlson from his ratings juggernaut on Fox News reportedly came straight from Rupert Murdoch.
The exact reasons for the anchor’s exit have not been officially confirmed by Fox, but sources have told various outlets that there were several factors at play. Persons familiar with the situation told the Los Angeles Times that Murdoch, the Fox Corporation chairman, was concerned about Carlson’s coverage of the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The anchor downplayed events as “mostly peaceful chaos” and promoted the conspiracy theory that it was provoked by government agents.
Carlson was roundly criticized for his comments, including by a number of Republican senators. “The American people saw what happened on January 6,” explained Senator Mitt Romney (R., Utah) to reporters. “They’ve seen the people that got injured, they saw the damage to the building. You can’t hide the truth by selectively picking a few minutes out of tapes and saying this is what went on. It’s so absurd. It’s nonsense.”
The decision to fire Carlson was also related to accusations made by Abby Grossberg, an ex-producer for Carlson, according to the L.A. Times. Grossberg was moved off of Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo and onto Tucker Carlson Tonight, where she said was bullied and subjected to antisemitic comments.
The ex-producer for Bartiromo and Carlson filed a lawsuit against Fox last month, accusing Fox lawyers of coercing her into giving misleading testimony in the network’s legal battle with Dominion Voting Systems. Fox News countersued Grossberg.
Axios also cited Grossberg as a factor in Carlson’s exit. The news outlet pointed to Carlson’s attempt to get Fox’s White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich fired for fact-checking a tweet from former president Donald Trump.
A representative from Dominion, which settled with Fox to the tune of $787.5 million, told the Times that Carlson’s firing was unrelated to the lawsuit, which accused Fox of defamation for allowing hosts and guests to make false election-fraud claims about the company.
However, the Dominion discovery process revealed disparaging comments Carlson made about management and other individuals like Trump, who the anchor said he hates passionately.
“Do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience?,” wrote Carlson a day after Fox called the election for Joe Biden, according to the Washington Post. Carlson expressed the same sentiment in another message, using an expletive: “Those f****** are destroying our credibility.”
In a third, Carlson said, “a combination of incompetent liberals and top leadership with too much pride to back down is what’s happening.”
More information that implicates Carlson and is legally damaging for Fox News could be out there as the company faces additional defamation suits.
Carlson will not host a farewell episode of his popular program, which averaged over 3 million viewers per night. His last episode was broadcast on Friday, April 21 and an interim show featuring a rotating cast of Fox News personalities will fill the 8 p.m. hour until a new host is named.