The mysterious sacking of Tucker Carlson

On Monday, April 24, 2023, Fox News unceremoniously sacked the presenter of their top-rated show, Tucker Carlson Tonight.

Only recently, it was the most-watched cable television news show:

Vanity Fair has the most detail on what happened and possible reasons why Carlson lost his job.

‘Tucker Carlson Was Blindsided by Fox News Firing’ says (purple emphases mine):

The media world was blindsided by the news that Tucker Carlson and Fox News would be parting ways. So was Carlson. 

On Monday morning, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott called Carlson and informed him he was being taken off the air, and his Fox News email account was shut off. According to a source briefed on the conversation, Carlson was stunned by his sudden ouster from his 8 p.m. show, the most watched program in cable news last month. Carlson was in the midst of negotiating the renewal of his Fox News contract through 2029, the source said. As of last week, Carlson had told people he expected the contract to be renewed …

The network provided few details in a Monday statement: “Fox News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways,” it read. “We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor.”

A Fox News spokesperson declined to comment beyond the press release. Carlson declined to comment.

Details are emerging about Carlson’s exit. The Los Angeles Times reported that “Carlson’s exit is related to the discrimination lawsuit filed by Abby Grossberg,” a producer fired last month, and that the decision to fire Carlson came from Fox Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch. And The Washington Post reported that Carlson’s comments about management, revealed in the defamation case brought by Dominion Voting Systems—which Fox settled last week for $787.5 million—“played a role in his departure.”

The Independent reported:

On Monday night, his “Tucker Carlson Tonight” show was instantly replaced with “Fox News Tonight” hosted by Brian Kilmeade, who brushed over Carlson’s sudden departure.

“As you probably have heard, Fox News and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways,” he said.

“I wish Tucker the best. I’m great friends with Tucker and always will be. But right now, it’s time for ‘Fox News Tonight,’ so let’s get started.”

Vanity Fair reported how the media world around the globe rejoiced at Tucker’s departure. However, his views were much more nuanced than his fellow broadcasters give him credit for. Tucker was never keen on Donald Trump and privately criticised the 45th American president’s insistence that he won the 2020 election. Tucker was also one of the few presenters anywhere who had people on with views opposite to his own. In addition, he covered news stories no one else would.

The former CNN presenter Brian Stelter wrote for Vanity Fair saying that we might never know why Fox News binned Carlson. Stelter said it looks like ‘an execution’:

Carlson became, for a couple of years, even bigger than his network. He was said to have a chummy relationship with Fox Corporation CEO Lachlan Murdoch. He was also said to be sharply critical of the women who ran Fox News for Murdoch. Fox staffers believed that Carlson could get away with anything for two main reasons: his friendship with Murdoch and his reliably high ratings …

Not being given a chance to sign off is the television equivalent of an execution.

“Damn,” a former Fox producer said to me right after it happened. “It had to be O’Reilly-level bad for him to not even get a goodbye show.” You’ll recall that Bill O’Reilly, the longtime renter of the 8 p.m. time slot at Fox, was booted in 2017 in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations and revelations about secret settlements. That’s not why Carlson is out—in fact, a well-placed network source says Carlson was not the subject of any misconduct investigation. Carlson has many, many flaws, but they’re distinct from O’Reilly’s flaws.

So what doomed Carlson? Here is a theory. The revelations from Dominion’s lawsuit against Fox, which the network settled last week for $787.5 million, were embarrassing for many individuals, including Carlson, whose private emotions about Donald Trump (a “destroyer,” a “demonic force”) and Fox’s own journalists were published for all the world to read. Hundreds of pages of emails and text messages from within Fox were published in Dominion’s pre-trial legal filings. But there is a huge number of other pages that remain out of public view. The redactions were voluminous. Only three groups of people know what those pages contain: Dominion’s lawyers, Fox’s top executives, and obviously the people who were sending and receiving the messages. So what was Carlson saying about, say, Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott? What was he texting about the Murdochs? We don’t know. We may never know. But this theory may explain why Carlson’s top producer and textmate, Justin Wells, was also terminated …

Other potential factors include former producer Abby Grossberg’s discrimination lawsuit against the network, which depicted the Tucker Carlson Tonight production environment as a frathouse where “sexist, demeaning comments” were free-flowing. Truth be told, Carlson’s exit may always be shrouded in some amount of mystery. Both Fox and Carlson may be incentivized, for financial reasons, to stay semi-peaceful in public.

Where can Tucker Carlson go now? Nowhere. He bears the distinction of having been sacked from all three major news channels in the US: Fox News, CNN and MSNBC. He also worked for PBS briefly in 2004 and 2005, at which time he was still on MSNBC and transitioning to CNN.

It’s possible he could return to The Daily Caller, a media outlet that he co-founded in 2010 with Neil Patel, a former college roommate who later worked for Dick Cheney. In June 2020, Carlson sold his third of the stake to Patel and bowed out of it completely.

Perhaps divine providence has called Carlson to take a well-deserved pause from broadcasting. Carlson and his wife, whose father is a priest, are practising Episcopalians. He once said that he loves the liturgy but loathes the politics.

I wish Tucker all the best and hope that he has a renaissance soon.