The Times Takes On Tucker

Welcome back to “Forgotten Fact-Checks,” a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we take a look at the New York Times’ profile of Tucker Carlson and its whitewashing of pornographic materials in schools, and hit more media misses.

The Times Takes On Tucker

Nick Confessore’s three-part essay series on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson at the New York Times will ultimately serve no earthly purpose.

Among the thousands upon thousands of words that Confessore dedicates to the project, there are plenty of entertaining anecdotes, and even occasional insight. But when a writer sets out to tell a story meant to please a particular audience, rather than to understand the subject, there’s little that can be done to stop him from producing something ineffectual. 

This column has not hesitated to correct Carlson — the most-watched cable-news host in the country — when he has been untruthful. And there’s little doubt that Carlson deserves criticism for some of the subject matter discussed in Confessore’s profile. But because of its own biases, inaccuracies, and structure, the piece will do nothing to convince readers not already inclined to despise Carlson of his villainy.

According to Confessore, “white backlash,” not inflation, educational disruption and stagnation, or crime, “is the jet fuel of a Republican Party striving to return to power in Washington.” In a not-so-subtle reference to a certain German dictator, he writes that “Mr. Carlson exists in a carefully constructed bubble of his own — a retreat, and a bunker.”

As evidence of Carlson’s bigotry, Confessore cites his criticism of Representative Ilhan Omar (who frequently makes antisemitic comments) and Kamala Harris (the vice president of the United States of America). Responding to Carlson’s warning about the effects of low-skill immigration on wages for blue-collar workers, Confessore simply links to a pair of studies, brushing off acknowledged consequences for high-school dropouts.

Another example of Carlson’s willingness to grab “third rails on race or immigration,” according to Confessore, was his claim that the 2020 riots that resulted in well over a billion dollars in damages — as well as the deaths of 19 people, most of them black — in just a two-week span were “definitely not about Black lives.”

Confressore puts Carlson’s personal history and professional career under a microscope in the series, including the painful story of his mother’s abandonment and a posthumous jab at his brother, no doubt to elicit the exact kind of reaction, and psychoanalysis, exhibited by MSNBC columnist Liz Plank:

In Tucker Carlson’s cable-news persona, there’s much to criticize. On Tucker Carlson Tonight, there’s often much to correct. In Nick Confessore’s attempted takedown, there’s no good-faith effort to understand the man behind the camera — there’s only an effort to destroy him.

Headline Fail of the Week

In an article titled “How a Debut Graphic Memoir Became the Most Banned Book in the Country,” the New York Times again attempts to downplay parental concerns in education.

The piece focuses on the controversy surrounding Gender Queer, a graphic novel about coming out as nonbinary, but waits until the 26th paragraph to describe the issue at hand: Schools are pulling the book from library shelves because it includes explicit images, including a drawing of the author and a girlfriend experimenting with a strap-on sex toy and another that depicts two men having sex.

While the article is accompanied by several images of the book, none are the drawings at issue. The piece also fails to include other images in the book that parents and educators have expressed concern about, including multiple explicit illustrations of minors performing oral sex on one another, and a drawing depicting a full-grown man performing a sex act on a minor. 

Before the paragraph in which the Times quickly blows past the explicit sex scenes, it notes that Gender Queer is the most challenged book in the U.S. and seems to suggest that the book has fallen victim to homophobia, writing that it is one of several titles that have been challenged or banned recently that are “by or about black and LGBTQ people.”

The article quotes the director of free expression and education at PEN America as saying that the graphic novel is at the center of a controversy “because it is dealing with sexuality at the time when that’s become taboo,” adding that, “there’s definitely an element of anti LGBTQ+ backlash.”

The alleged paper of record uses language that makes it clear which side it’s on, writing that the memoir “deals with puberty and sexual identity, and includes a few drawings of nude characters and sexual scenarios — images that critics of the book were able to share on social media to stoke a backlash.”

Media Misses

–The New York Times first described Kathy Boudin, who passed away over the weekend, as a “member of the Weather Underground” who “took part in the murderous 1981 holdup of a Brink’s armored truck.” Then, the Times deleted the tweet and described Boudin, the mother of San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin, as “a member of the Weather Underground imprisoned for her role in a fatal robbery but who later helped former inmates.” 

–On Friday, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., NY.) asserted that “in Texas, Republicans passed a law allowing rapists to sue their victims for getting an abortion.” That was a lie. The bill passed by the Texas legislature last year allows private citizens to sue those who facilitate abortions after the detection of a fetal heartbeat. It also stated that it could not “be construed to authorize the initiation of a cause of action against or the prosecution of a woman on whom an abortion is performed or induced or attempted to be performed or induced.”

In other words, no one — much less violent sexual criminals — can sue Texas women for having an abortion.