Tucker Carlson’s Downfall – The New York Times

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For years, Fox News host Tucker Carlson has faced criticism for promoting racist and anti-immigrant ideas. But the issue doesn’t seem to have anything to do with his death.

However, a long list of controversies related to Carlson’s actions on and off the air began to plague Fox News executives, and the network quickly announced his departure yesterday.

Network executives and contributors have complained, and some quit, about Carlson’s misleading coverage of the January 6 attack, in which he portrayed the rioters as “mostly peaceful” spectators. The 2020 election conspiracy theory coverage is part of Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit against Fox, which the network filed last week. Carlson has also personally berated Fox executives, saying they harmed the network’s credibility by allowing them to call President Biden’s election victory, as reported by The Washington Post.

And a former producer recently accused Carlson in a lawsuit of workplace misogyny and discrimination. Fox has denied the claims.

As one of the top hosts on the most-watched cable news network, Carlson plays a big role in conservative politics. Today’s newsletter will look at Carlson’s influence and what his exit means for Fox News.

Carlson took over Fox News’ 8 pm slot in 2017 and increased ratings, quickly becoming a fixture on the right-wing network and in conservative politics.

how? Carlson taps into the white audience’s fear of the country’s changing racial demographics, which led to the rise of Donald Trump in the 2016 election. He will focus on the idea of ​​the “great replacement”, a racist conspiracy theory that claims the elites import immigrants they think are loyal to eliminate native Americans. . In 2018, Carlson asserted that hordes of immigrants are making America “poorer and dirtier.”

Carlson often highlights local news stories but bends them to make broader claims about Americans losing control of their country. In one segment in 2017, he claimed “Gypsies” were causing chaos in a small Pennsylvania town, urinating and defecating on the streets.

“The message of the segment is always the same: You and your way of life are under attack, and the people attacking you look different and have different values ​​than you,” my friend Nicholas Confessore, who covered Carlson’s rise for The Times, told me yesterday. “Carlson reassures viewers that their discomfort is natural – they shouldn’t feel fear and anxiety.”

Carlson did so by embracing Trumpism but not Trump himself. The approach is partly personal. In a private text, Carlson said of Trump, “I hate him.” It also helped set Carlson apart from other Fox News hosts, Nicholas said. Because they align with Trump, hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham often have to defend him when Trump says something is outrageous. Carlson tried to avoid those pitfalls by focusing on his underlying message rather than Trump’s public face.

Fox’s largely white audience supported Carlson’s approach, and he drew more than three million viewers nightly, regularly making the network’s No. 1 or No. 2 show. And even though accusations of bigotry and falsehoods caused sponsors to flee Fox, Carlson’s show boosted ad revenue because of its massive audience.

Carlson hasn’t said what he’ll do next. But without a large audience, they probably won’t have the impact.

Fox News said it will rotate hosts in the 8 pm slot until it can find a permanent replacement. At first glance, this seems bad for the network: Not only lost one of the biggest stars, but has no replacement lined up. And the announcement comes at a time when Fox has faced a month of bad publicity, and just agreed to $ 787.5 million in debt through Dominion.

But Fox has overcome similar challenges with previous hosts. Carlson himself replaced Bill O’Reilly, who was once the most popular host of the network, and not only maintained O’Reilly’s ratings but sometimes exceeded them. That experience may have led Fox to believe that the network is worth more to its audience than to individual hosts.

Former Fox executive Roger Ailes occasionally counted the stars late at night to show that ratings remained high in their absence — a sign that Fox made them big, Nicholas said. “I suspect the audience’s loyalty to Fox may be greater than the audience’s loyalty to a particular Fox star,” he said.

Addiction is not as simple as lack of control, Maia Szalavitz argue. Understanding these effects can help make drug policy more meaningful.

The Chinese government’s attempt to rewrite Hong Kong’s struggle for independence as an act of repression, Louis Lim argue.

And here is the column by Maureen Dowd in Ron DeSantis and by Paul Krugman about NIMBYism.

Did Ed Sheeran copy his Grammy-winning ballad “Thinking Out Loud” from Marvin Gaye’s soul classic “Let’s Get It On”? That question is at the center of a copyright trial that began yesterday in federal court in Manhattan.

Due to a quirk of music copyright, this case depends mainly on the chord progression of the song, which is very similar, as this video comparison shows. But Sheeran’s lawyers argue that the chords are common in pop music — including in songs by artists he used before Gaye and Ed Townsend, who collaborated with him on “Let’s Go.”

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