The latest attempt at impacting Tucker Carlson’s reign atop the ratings will again prove fruitless.
The New York Times just finished releasing a lengthy attempted takedown of Tucker Carlson, this time surely a blow that will impact his stature at Fox News. Meaning — it is more likely to blow his ratings higher. This time, Carlson is shown to be unfit for the airwaves as a result of the major revelation that he is a white supremacist.
Yes, again.
Tucker was so deeply impacted by the scathing report that he took to social media to…well, not exactly to dispute the charges.
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) May 1, 2022
Tucker also addressed the upcoming piece on his show on Thursday, in a dismissive fashion. Noting that the focus of this attempted hit job was focused on him allegedly being a racist. “If that sounds like a familiar attack, that’s because it is. This has got to be the tenth or the 27th or the 217th story just like this.” To say Carlson was not altogether fretting over the fallout is a more than fair measure of things; it is dead-on accurate.
The release was a three-part measure of Tucker’s entire career, written by Nicolas Confessore, that entailed not just his early journalism work but also his home life and the various personal struggles he has endured which supposedly help form Tucker’s claimed allegiance to white supremacy.
The only original aspect of this piece is that Confessore claims that he has come up with a definitive measure to prove Carlson’s racism, which he declares with what he offers up as his supposed clinical proof.
“His show may be the most racist program in the history of cable news. This isn’t an opinion or a take. It’s a fact — supported by our content analysis of 1,150 episodes of ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’ by Karen Yourish, Dawn Cai, Larry Buch, and their colleagues.”
Well, not meaning to quibble over semantics, Nic — but your use of the word “may” undercuts your boasting it is a fact. But further, a biased measure of things in a Media Matters fashion here is hardly a scientific study. Where is all the data of other pundits you measured using the same metrics, for instance? Honestly, if you are seeking out who the most racist member of cable news might be, it would help to have data on Joy Reid, who cannot go an episode without invoking claims of racism multiple times.
But to get a grasp of where they point their clipboards while watching over one thousand clips of Carlson from over the years and numerous networks we get this indicator of what they looked for in their study. “(Carlson)regularly disparages Black women as stupid or undeserving of their positions.” Listed in this segment are examples regarding Kamala Harris, Ilhan Omar, and Maxine Waters. What is clear is that while that commentary is standing alone, this is a case of interpretation, but you need to step back and look at the broader picture.
If Tucker is engaged in political discourse and is being critical, even exaggerating at times, it is the expected work of a primetime pundit. He always has critical-to-caustic things to say about those he may oppose on an issue, but these are political players he is commenting on. Words that he could apply to a white woman like Elizabeth Warren would not raise a pencil in the checkbox column, but take the exact same words and have them spoken about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez they suddenly are classified as racist.
Confessore is also very reticent about displaying from just where it is he is approaching Carlson’s judgment. Nic, you see, is actually employed by Tucker’s competition in the cable news industry, a detail that seems rather significant in this attempted takedown, but one he barely makes known. He actually does get around to disclosing this detail…eventually. The revealing sentence included – “(The writer of this article is an MSNBC contributor.)” – does not appear until dozens of paragraphs deep, after nearly 6,000 words.
In the second part, it is again a case of this blithe parenthetical being included at a depth that would cause the bends if a reader were to surface back to the headline too quickly. It is 60 paragraphs before Nic feels the need to alert a reader to his involvement with a Fox-competing network.
And there are more competitive disqualifiers that are included. In one section, there is a detail about a Fox News internal human resources issue, delivered by a Fox employee. Sort of. Jeanine Pirro had on a past show of hers asked on the air if Ilhan Omar might be more loyal to her Muslim faith than the Constitution. This asking of a question is described as a “slur” by Confessore, revealing the measures of their “study.” This intolerant query then involved further involvement with a producer in Los Angeles, Dan Gallo.
Gallo recited ongoing issues he had with Fox HR regarding Pirro and Carlson, providing emails to the Times showing some of the correspondence. After a number of paragraphs establishing this internal contempt, we get served a detail about this primary source. In a portion about Tucker confronting Gallo over his complaint here is what gets revealed.
“That night, Mr. Gallo wrote again to the human resources executives, asking who had told Mr. Carlson about his complaint. They promised to talk to Mr. Carlson. But pressed on the leak in a subsequent phone call, [Fox executive Kevin] Lord refused to look into the matter. He blamed workplace gossip, and insinuated that Mr. Gallo himself was responsible for the leak.That was insulting,” Mr. Gallo said. “I stuck to the proper channels and had moved on.” He left Fox that summer, and now works for MSNBC.
This episode is from the Spring of 2019, and Gallo soon left the network for his current employer. So what had been established as testimony from inside Fox News was actually commentary made by another member of the MSNBC competition, regarding an issue from years ago.
Beyond the track record of impotent attacks on his character over the years, this petty gripe from within the offices of MSNBC, delivered as an impartial and meticulous study in The Times “proving” Tucker Carlson is a racist is all the reason you see why the Fox News host was laughing with the release of this report.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member