Tucker Carlson Departs Fox News, Effective Immediately

[Pelerin]

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.

Was he lying though? I’ve read that he expressed skepticism on air to some of the claims his guests were making. I went looking (just now) and came up with this from ABC comparing Tucker Carlson’s private and public statements. The article is pretty hostile to Tucker (it seems to be heavily based on the Dominion filing), but it does note that he did push back some:

Carlson during this show also said that "false claims of fraud can be every bit as destructive as the fraud itself," according to the filing, and that "[T]he fraud that we can confirm does not seem to be enough to alter the election results. We should be honest and tell you that..."

Another of the entries:

PRIVATE: On Nov. 13, Carlson wrote privately that Trump needed to concede, and agreed that "there wasn't enough fraud to change the outcome" of the election, according to the filing.

PUBLIC: Three nights later, Carlson said on air that there are "legitimate concerns" about election integrity.

"Millions of Americans understandably are asking the questions and questions like it. Those are real questions. Our current system does not inspire confidence," he said. "People have legitimate concerns about the integrity of our elections and right now a lot of those concerns center on the software that many states use to keep track of ballots." And while Carlson added that he would not "endorse" Powell's claims until he saw evidence, he said they were "shocking" and that he didn't "dismiss it out of hand."

First of all those two statements don’t contradict. But also Tucker’s private statement suggests that he did believe there was fraud, even if he didn’t buy into all of the kooky stuff his guests espoused. Overall the impression I get from this (unfriendly) article is that he was skeptical but not unbelieving. He was probably under pressure—explicitly or implicitly—from Fox, from his viewers, from his own showmanship to let the audience hear guests that say what they want to hear. He was probably too reluctant to challenge them too much, probably even to the point of cowardice. Or was he? I’ve never watched his show, so I really don’t have any feel for what kind of impression I would have gotten of it if I had actually watched him. Is there any way I could possibly find out now? I can say I’m pretty sure that Tucker Carlson didn’t explicitly espouse these things on air himself or else the article would have told me.

There’s just so much dishonesty—on all sides—when it comes to the whole election fraud thing. I’m about ready to take up my lamp and start wandering around town. But then they’re the cynics.

[Ken]

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.

I was responding to the Tucker Carlson quote which was this:

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.”

Which is a very vague statement with no evidence whatsoever. I assume he is referencing Twitter-gate or whatever the right is calling it. But Twitter is a private company just like FOX and both of them are free to control what sort of content is on their platforms. And when it comes to private companies filtering their content, FOX is 1000x more culpable of that than Twitter ever was. Twitter only concerned itself with whether or not specific posts violated its terms of service. They were not doing what FOX does which is curate information on a daily, hourly, and minute-by-minute basis to present a one-sided picture.

My point was that FOX's very business model is to do the very thing that Tucker Carlson is accusing others of doing. Namely, filtering information in order to influence how people vote. And yes, they are doing so in plain sight with the complicity and cooperation of the government. It just happens to be a symbiotic relationship that they have with right-wing politicians from Trump on down, not some sort of command-and-control censorship operation of the sort one sees in say China.

I'm not claiming that FOX is engaged in any sort of illegal censorship. I'm just taking issue with Tucker Carlson's characterization of the 2020 election.

[Josh]

Apparently Carlson and Lemon are still getting paid and will be through 2024. This means they can’t go to another media outlet unless they voluntarily quit.

It also means they aren’t actually fired - they just aren’t on the air anymore. Google has done this with many employees; they get assigned to an unimportant job with no responsibility but they can’t go work for a competitor.

[temporal1]

Apparently Carlson and Lemon are still getting paid and will be through 2024.
This means they can’t go to another media outlet unless they voluntarily quit.

It also means they aren’t actually fired - they just aren’t on the air anymore. Google has done this with many employees; they get assigned to an unimportant job with no responsibility but they can’t go work for a competitor.

THE OP NEWS LINK HEADLINE: https://people.com/politics/tucker-carl ... -fox-news/
“FOX News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways,” a statement announcing the departure reads. “Mr. Carlson’s last program was Friday”

No reference to DL in that link.

If you are correct about TERMS for either/both, it makes me recall a recent short discussion about some union school teachers removed from teaching, but put in employment “holding tanks” without work but with pay (???) i don’t recall the MN topic.

TERMS can be very important. Employment contracts are often about much more than stated salary.

It’s fair to guess more is unknown than known.

But the reports really bring out the bias+emotions of the public, don’t they?? In unfiltered abundance.

[Ernie]

Tucker Carlson collectibles can be ordered here. Not that I advise it.
https://tuckercarlson.com/store/

[Ernie]

And Twitter is now his platform.

[Jazman]

And Twitter is now his platform.

I find it sad, but somewhat laugh-worthy in a twisted ironic way... to note that the same crowd (trending baby-boomer / older) that decries millennials et al for having their noses in their devices... and can't concentrate, work, etc like 'real' old-timey americans! could... will now have their faces/noses even more firmly glued to media platforms like Twitter... because it's a tribal totem now! (but of course we know they had and have had their faces glued to these outlets before, hanging on every word...)

[temporal1]

And Twitter is now his platform.

https://twitter

I find it sad, but somewhat laugh-worthy in a twisted ironic way... to note that the same crowd (trending baby-boomer / older) that decries millennials et al for having their noses in their devices... and can't concentrate, work, etc like 'real' old-timey americans! could... will now have their faces/noses even more firmly glued to media platforms like Twitter... because it's a tribal totem now! (but of course we know they had and have had their faces glued to these outlets before, hanging on every word...)

Are you having a particularly hard day today?

Kayleigh McEnany: This is the hardest question to answer / 16:45min

Description:
Co-Host of Outnumbered on the FOX News Channel and former White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany joins Martha MacCallum to discuss her latest book, titled
“Serenity in the Storm: Living Through Chaos by Leaning on Christ.”

i’ve never followed Fox, TC, Twitter; i’m interested in this move by Fox.
i had no idea about Kayleigh as a Christian, i don’t look to politicians or news pundits for faith leadership. (i appreciate it when they don’t overtly defy, undermine, or hate Christians.)

Correction:

Kayleigh McEnany Picked as the Next Fox News Host to Tryout for Tucker Carlson’s Old Time Slot
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/kay ... 12858.html

[Robert]

I find it sad, but somewhat laugh-worthy in a twisted ironic way... to note that the same crowd (trending baby-boomer / older) that decries millennials et al for having their noses in their devices... and can't concentrate, work, etc like 'real' old-timey americans! could... will now have their faces/noses even more firmly glued to media platforms like Twitter... because it's a tribal totem now! (but of course we know they had and have had their faces glued to these outlets before, hanging on every word...)

Instead of throwing barbs at others, speak for yourself.

[Josh]

And Twitter is now his platform.

More accurately, Twitter is anyone’s platform. You or I could go on Twitter and use it exactly like Tucker Carlson or anyone else does.

Musk has made it clear he doesn’t plan to engage in censorship and wants to see a wide variety of views on Twitter.