Why was Tucker Carlson fired so suddenly?: In the nearly 24 hours since the Fox News host was suddenly out at the network, several media accounts have listed different reasons for his abrupt departure.
Tucker Carlson Is Gone: Why?
On Monday, in shocking news, Fox News parted ways with its most popular prime-time host, Tucker Carlson.
The announcement from the company did not give a reason, except to say that “Fox News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways” and “We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor.”
The departure was thought to be related to the $787.5 million settlement, the week before, that Fox reached with Dominion Voting System, the voting machine company that had sued Fox for its role in spreading baseless conspiracy theories about the election.
That suit had led to the unearthing of numerous embarrassing text messages by Carlson, including the host once stating of Donald Trump that “I hate him with a passion.”
What We Know So Far
In the day since, a few different explanations have surfaced as to why, exactly, Tucker Carlson, was dropped so suddenly.
The Washington Post reported that the firing was indeed related to the text messages that came to light in the Dominion suit, but not the ones about Trump- in fact, it was the ones where Carlson was critical of Fox management.
A report later on Monday from Semafor found another explanation, one related to a different lawsuit. Abby Grossberg, a former Fox News employee who worked on Carlson’s show, sued the network in March, alleging “she and other women faced sexism and harassment from coworkers and officials.” Grossberg had also stated that both Carlson and Justin Wells, the show’s executive producer who also departed the network on Monday, were “squarely in the center of [Grossberg’s] Southern District of New York complaints for sex discrimination, hostile work environment, etc.”
Meanwhile, a report Monday afternoon in The Daily Beast had another explanation, also related to the Dominion lawsuit: Carlson had made “vulgar comments” about Sidney Powell, the attorney and conspiracy theorist who worked on Donald Trump’s behalf for a time after the 2020 election and spread some of the more outlandish conspiracies about voting machines, Venezuela, and other foreign actors interfering in the election.
The Beast report said that Carlson had already angered his bosses with his recent January 6 reporting, as well as the Grossberg suit and the negative comments about Fox management. However, “most egregious” was that Carlson had used the “c-word” regarding Powell on more than one occasion.
Per the report, Fox Corp CEO Lachlan Murdoch and Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott had decided on Friday that they had to fire Carlson. However, the host was reportedly not told about the decision until minutes before it was announced to the public.
The network, per The Daily Beast, “had rid itself of Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly after years of sexual-harassment complaints and could not have its biggest star undermining any supposed progress.”
One former Fox producer told CNN host-turned-Vanity Fair writer Brian Stelter that “it had to be O’Reilly-level bad for him to not even get a goodbye show,” although Stelter added that there is no misconduct investigation, and “Carlson has many, many flaws, but they’re distinct from O’Reilly’s flaws.”
Stelter also reported that there exist lots of redacted pages in the Dominion transcripts, which may have contained negative things Carlson wrote about his bosses.
In a separate Vanity Fair story, journalist Gabriel Sherman, who wrote a book about Fox News in the Roger Ailes era, reported that Carlson had been negotiating a new contract to keep him at Fox through 2029, and was stunned by the sudden firing.
Carlson also “told people he believes his controversial show is being taken off the air because the Murdoch children intend to sell Fox News at some point,” in a development that would match events on the popular HBO show “Succession,” which is thought to be based on the Murdoch family.
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Expertise and Experience
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
