Tucker Carlson Departs Fox News, Effective Immediately

[GaryK]

What is kind of interesting is those here who are more progressive seem to watch Fox News. I mean, they must because who else would they know what is on it. I don't know any of the more conservative people on this forum who do. I have not watched it in years and only have seen clips of Tucker Carlson so I really have no idea what he does most days.

I'm mostly familiar with clips people post here or refer to here. But a lot of these sources play off of each other. When I Google claims made here, Fox and Tucker Carlson come up.

I continue to prefer written sources that are easily fact checked and where the story develops as the facts develop.

I'm the same way. I don't have cable, I don't watch TV news. I don't watch CNN. I don't watch MSNBC. I don't watch Fox. I sometimes watch German TV news -- the Tagesschau or Deutsche Welle. I also prefer written sources.

I do sometimes try to track where opinions and viewpoints expressed on MD come from and I've long noticed a link between Fox and here. Something said on Fox will often eventually end up on here even if the participant here didn't directly get it on Fox. Stuff on Fox often ends up being a major part of the conservative conversation, which shows the influence it's had.

I'm curious and I try to pay attention to what's going on.

It happens both ways. I read a wide spectrum of news and I have seen viewpoints I read on CNN and other left leaning sources end up here on MN as well. I'm doubtful any of us are completely immune to the dominant narratives that are being propagated by media sources.

[Ernie]

People have let other people think for them and also let the way news is skewed affect their emotions and no longer try to sit back and just look at what has been said and how it has been presented. And once again- this is not just the left this is not just the right it is everyone.

I really like what you have to say but might tweak it to say, "This doesn't just affect either the left or right but can affect everyone."
I think there are individuals here and there who do try to sit back and just look at what has been said and how it has been presented.

[Ernie]

I do sometimes try to track where opinions and viewpoints expressed on MD come from and I've long noticed a link between Fox and here. Something said on Fox will often eventually end up on here even if the participant here didn't directly get it on Fox. Stuff on Fox often ends up being a major part of the conservative conversation, which shows the influence it's had.

I agree. But do you also agree that much from CNN ends up here on MD also?

It happens both ways. I read a wide spectrum of news and I have seen viewpoints I read on CNN and other left leaning sources end up here on MN as well. I'm doubtful any of us are completely immune to the dominant narratives that are being propagated by media sources.

I agree. Whenever someone consistently defends people and positions on one side of the political spectrum, and consistently speaks disparagingly about people and positions on the opposite side, I assume they are not immune to the dominant narratives.

[Ken]

I came across this on Twitter. I agree with it. I can not say I agree with everything he says, but this is very true.

TUCKER: “If you use technology to censor the ideas that people are allowed to express... ultimately, you control how the population votes. And that’s exactly what they did. They rigged the election in front of all of us, and nobody did anything about it.”

That is pretty rich coming from Tucker Carlson and FOX News. His show and the entire FOX News apparatus is a giant filter designed to amplify one specific political viewpoint and filter out all others. He is describing himself and his former network to a T.

But neither Tucker nor his critics were censored. On both sides of the spectrum, some people said all kinds of things that would have gotten them arrested in Russia or Hungary, where you can get jailed for spreading what the government calls misinformation. And in fact, it was disinformation. In Russia or Hungary, simply telling the truth will get you jailed. Calling a war a war, for instance. Freedom of speech does not seem to be endangered in America. Critical thinking is in more danger.

The government had no standing to sue Tucker or Fox for the lies they spread about Dominion. Dominion did, because they are a private company whose business was directly threatened - after all, if you make a device that is meant to count votes accurately, and nothing else, you will not have a market if people believe it does not count votes accurately. And a bunch of their employees received death threats from people who believed that democracy was in danger. So there are some limits about the lies you can tell, but this is nothing new.

Fox decided to fire Tucker. Rupert Murdoch didn't do that because he's some kind of bleeding liberal. But Tucker does not have a constitutional right to work for Fox News, that's up to Murdoch.

That isn't what I'm saying.

What I am saying is that FOX and Tucker deliberately censored opposing viewpoints on their shows. For example, in the wake of the 2020 election how many guests did Tucker have on that were prepared to explain that his claims of election fraud where bogus? None. He only brought on guests who parroted the narrative that he and FOX were trying to put forward.

They deliberately only show one side of whatever argument they are making. Other voices are censored. In the case of the 2020 election they were putting forward the viewpoint that the government (Trump Administration) wanted disseminated and censoring opposing viewpoints.

This is exactly what Tucker was accusing Twitter of doing. Except that in the case of FOX it is true while in the case of Twitter it was not.

[Bootstrap]

That isn't what I'm saying.

What I am saying is that FOX and Tucker deliberately censored opposing viewpoints on their shows. For example, in the wake of the 2020 election how many guests did Tucker have on that were prepared to explain that his claims of election fraud where bogus? None. He only brought on guests who parroted the narrative that he and FOX were trying to put forward.

They deliberately only show one side of whatever argument they are making. Other voices are censored.

That's not really censorship, as I understand it. Here's how the ACLU defines censorship:

https://www.aclu.org/other/what-censorship

Censorship, the suppression of words, images, or ideas that are "offensive," happens whenever some people succeed in imposing their personal political or moral values on others. Censorship can be carried out by the government as well as private pressure groups. Censorship by the government is unconstitutional.

In contrast, when private individuals or groups organize boycotts against stores that sell magazines of which they disapprove, their actions are protected by the First Amendment, although they can become dangerous in the extreme. Private pressure groups, not the government, promulgated and enforced the infamous Hollywood blacklists during the McCarthy period. But these private censorship campaigns are best countered by groups and individuals speaking out and organizing in defense of the threatened expression.

I don't think Fox is obligated to tell both sides of a story or even to tell the truth. The government should not be in a position to impose its definition of truth on media. if Fox is lying, it's up to people to educate themselves, to ask where verifiable facts can be found, to pay attention to propaganda techniques that they use and compare them to the propaganda techniques used by authoritarian governments.

I suspect that there are a bunch of attempts to shut down speech people disagree with by death threats, pressure campaigns, etc. Those groups scare me too, even though they are not branches of the government.

[Bootstrap]

It happens both ways. I read a wide spectrum of news and I have seen viewpoints I read on CNN and other left leaning sources end up here on MN as well. I'm doubtful any of us are completely immune to the dominant narratives that are being propagated by media sources.

I don't think ideological lean is the best way to measure this, though.

Facts and truth often provide one dominant narrative. If the verifiable facts for a given story look more like one side or the other is telling, that's not a reason to reject the truth. And for some stories, one side may well be the one that is telling the truth.

Predefined narratives that media sources shoehorn stories into, regardless of the facts, are quite another story, of course ... ideology trumping truth ... black and white answers long before the facts come in ... enmity narratives instead of waiting for the truth ... not good.

[Szdfan]

I came across this on Twitter. I agree with it. I can not say I agree with everything he says, but this is very true.

TUCKER: “If you use technology to censor the ideas that people are allowed to express... ultimately, you control how the population votes. And that’s exactly what they did. They rigged the election in front of all of us, and nobody did anything about it.”

Thanks to release of his emails due to discovery in the Dominion case, we know that Tucker did not believe the claims he made about the election being stolen. He's lying. He knows he's lying.

[Bootstrap]

I came across this on Twitter. I agree with it. I can not say I agree with everything he says, but this is very true.

TUCKER: “If you use technology to censor the ideas that people are allowed to express... ultimately, you control how the population votes. And that’s exactly what they did. They rigged the election in front of all of us, and nobody did anything about it.”

Thanks to release of his emails due to the discovery in the Dominion case, we know that Tucker did not believe the claims he made about the election being stolen. He's lying. He knows he's lying.

And demonstrating that someone is lying ... that's not censorship. Telling the truth is also protected under the First Amendment.

[Szdfan]

I came across this on Twitter. I agree with it. I can not say I agree with everything he says, but this is very true.

TUCKER: “If you use technology to censor the ideas that people are allowed to express... ultimately, you control how the population votes. And that’s exactly what they did. They rigged the election in front of all of us, and nobody did anything about it.”

Thanks to release of his emails due to the discovery in the Dominion case, we know that Tucker did not believe the claims he made about the election being stolen. He's lying. He knows he's lying.

And demonstrating that someone is lying ... that's not censorship. Telling the truth is also protected under the First Amendment.

He also insulted his co-workers and his bosses in his emails and apparently the unredacted emails are horrible. Most companies would fire an employee who acted that way. That's not censorship.

[temporal1]

People have let other people think for them and also let the way news is skewed affect their emotions and no longer try to sit back and just look at what has been said and how it has been presented. And once again- this is not just the left this is not just the right it is everyone.

I really like what you have to say but might tweak it to say, "This doesn't just affect either the left or right but can affect everyone."

I think there are individuals here and there who do try to sit back and just look at what has been said and how it has been presented.

Agreed. Even the best/most successful of these are not without bias, both personal and from what they’ve viewed,
which is never in full.

GaryK:
It happens both ways. I read a wide spectrum of news and I have seen viewpoints I read on CNN and other left leaning sources end up here on MN as well.

I'm doubtful any of us are completely immune to the dominant narratives that are being propagated by media sources.

Agreed.

i’m no fan of TC, i can’t get past (what strikes me as) his vapid presentation style.

Emails? i haven’t followed, but making sweeping judgments against personal thoughts, private messages, possibly mindless venting??
Without opportunity to explain or defend/deny?? Certainly, kangaroo courts love this kind of thing.
i haven’t needed anything like that to ignore him all these years.

Odd how those who beg for patience for in-depth investigations develop amnesia for it when the scent of red meat wafts in the air.