The Fall of Tucker Carlson
I want to share with you a group email from someone for whom I have great respect. (I'm not naming him because he didn't give me permission to use his name.) Like him, I've long been dismissive of Tucker Carlson -- even before his Fox News gig -- because of his racism, sexism, anti-immigrant views and preppie conservatism. But, unlike AOC, who just called for his banning from TV, I thought there was a story behind his sudden expulsion as the top-rated host at Fox News.
I suspect that Carlson was not jettisoned by the Murdochs because of a few offensive emails. What bigwig at Fox News is innocent of that charge? (Rupert and Lachlan would have to let go most of the company, starting with themselves.) I think the real reason that Carlson was fired was because he was evolving into a more independent voice on everything from the dominance of the war state -- which goes unchallenged by our media and political elites - to the assassination of President Kennedy. Carlson believes that the CIA was involved in the assassination, the reason that the spy agency has repeatedly flouted the 1992 JFK Records Act and blocked the full release of Kennedy-related documents.
Recently, I was approached by another Fox News host, who declared himself an avid fan of my book "The Devil's Chessboard" -- a dark history of the Cold War-era CIA, including the JFK assassination. Let's see if I'm still invited on the network now that Carlson has been unceremoniously dumped.
Anyway, as my learned friend points out in his email, many left-wing pundits have come to similar conclusions about Carlson's firing. Here's what he wrote:
Lest the following confuse you, I detest Tucker.
Nevertheless ...
Jacob Hornberger (Future of Freedom Foundation) offers the possibility it was Tucker's JFK stuff that was behind his ouster:
"Let me weigh in on another possibility (re Carlson's firing) — that the Pentagon and the CIA may have been the ones who put the quietus on Tucker and possibly signaled to Fox executives that he had to go...
"Last December, Carlson broadcast a program on the assassination of President Kennedy in which he accused the CIA of having participated in the assassination. In doing so, Carlson violated a taboo that has existed within the mainstream media since November 22, 1963, the day that Kennedy was assassinated ... ." https://www.fff.org/.../did-the-cia-and-the-pentagon-put.../
Jonathan Cook at consortiumnews.com offers other possibilities that may have played a role in Tucker's ouster. Inter alia, Cook notes that:
Here is just a taste of some of the highlights of his time with Fox News:
While the rest of the U.S. media ignored a major investigation by the legendary journalist Seymour Hersh, or deflected attention to a crazed, semi-official conspiracy theory involving a rogue crew on a yacht, Carlson dared present evidence that the U.S. blew up the Nord Stream pipelines — an act of unprecedented industrial and environmental terrorism...
Uniquely among corporate journalists, Carlson gave airtime to the testimony of whistleblowers from the OPCW, the U.N. body monitoring chemical weapons. The testimony confirmed that, under U.S. pressure, the OPCW rigged an investigation into a gas attack in Douma, Syria, to blame Syrian President Bashar Assad and retrospectively provide the pretext for illegal U.S., U.K. and French air strikes...
Carlson recently broke with the corporate media consensus by highlighting the substance of the Pentagon leaks, not least that U.S. soldiers are covertly fighting in Ukraine. He went further, berating fellow journalists for colluding with the White House in helping to track down the leaker and cover up the most significant revelations:
As (Jimmy) Dore (a hard left agitator) tweeted after Carlson’s sacking: “No one else in all of corporate news ever brings on anti-war voices, [and] the one that did just got axed. Doesn’t matter that he’s the most watched show in all of news – much like when MSNBC fired Phil Donohue for his anti-Iraq War coverage when he had #1 show on network.”
Cook follows with:
"But if Carlson’s firing by Murdoch suggests anything, it is that the corporate media had grown increasingly fearful of the extent to which Carlson was becoming a loose cannon and that the kind of independent journalism he hosted and amplified was gaining traction.
"Through a rapid rise in his ratings, Carlson proved that there is an appetite, a big one, for stories that question the consensual narrative imposed by the rest of the corporate media, for stories that actually hold the powerful to account — rather simply claiming to — and for stories that refuse to assume Western meddling around the globe is necessarily a good thing.
"If it was only white fearmongering that drew audiences and propelled network news hosts to the top slot, then Sean Hannity would surely be king of the ratings, not Carlson.
"The reality, the one Carlson confirms, is that there is an audience ready to listen to critical, independent journalism — when it can be found. The job of the corporate media is precisely to stop viewers hearing dissident views, a rule that Carlson played fast and loose with for too long. Now, it seems, he has paid the price."
Let me suggest you click the link to Cook's piece and watch the videos he links to. They're sooo far from what is elsewhere "allowed," it's enormously instructive.
Given Carlson did ask important questions no one else in the MSM asked, and that he featured radical journalists the "legacy" media abjured, it's a tragedy he was a borderline Christofascist-racist.
Tucker Carlson