Tucker Carlson may not be the last person to fall prey to Fox executives who are eager to clear the wreckage and move on from the damage caused by the $787.5 million Dominion lawsuit.
Ratings Game
Tucker Carlson told 19FortyFive that he remains employed by Fox News even though his show was off the air. One would presume he has to negotiate an exit with almost two years remaining on his contract. His executive producer Justin Wells was fired.
Fox’s ratings imploded by two-thirds in Carlson’s former 8 pm timeslot following his suspension.
Carlson averaged 3 million viewers every night. The replacement show, headlined by Brian Kilmeade, cratered with 1.7 million viewers. By contrast, Carlson’s video posted on his Twitter account at 8 p.m. on Wednesday received 1.7 million viewers in the first hour and over 75 million views as of Friday.
In-House Horror Stories
Fox staffers now live in fear they could be next, Rolling Stone reports.
Some Fox staffers have taken measures to shield their communications with outside media and have changed their journalist contacts to fake names. They have done this should they receive a call from management or “their spies” as one Fox employee who spoke to Rolling Stone described it.
Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo could be one of the next hosts ousted from the company as it looks to put the costly lawsuit behind it. Executives have reportedly had discussions about her future with the company. Evidence in the Dominion lawsuit suggests she repeatedly may have shown poor news judgement that rendered Fox liable.
Dominion charged in its suit that Fox, through Bartiromo “placed Dominion at the center of a wide-ranging and inherently implausible conspiracy theory designed to perpetuate the myth that Donald Trump and not Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 Presidential Election.”
She repeatedly had Trump surrogate Sidney Powell on her program and allowed her to promote the idea that a U.S. government algorithm had changed votes in the election. The suit noted that Bartiromo knew that the claims were likely unreliable or false. In one email, Bartiromo acknowledged that she thought Powell’s claims were “pretty whackadoodle.”
Election Fraud Claims and January 6 Coverage
Carlson denounced Bartiromo privately texting, “[t]he software s**t is absurd Half our viewers have seen the Maria clip.”
Bartiromo regards her show as a news show. However, Carlson lamented that she made false claims about the election on her show, court papers show. Her former producer Abby Grossberg, who recently named Carlson as a defendant in a suit claiming he created a toxic work environment, stated that Bartiromo did not make any effort to inform her viewers that her guest’s claim was not true.
Dominion alleged that Bartiromo let audience ratings cloud her news judgement. It noted in court papers that Grossberg decided that the idea that Dominion rigged the election was what the audience wanted to hear and that Bartiromo agreed with her.
Jeanine Pirro also reportedly could be shown the door, according to Rolling Stone. Fox previously suspended Pirro for making comments about Rep. Ilhan Omar’s patriotism in 2019.
Pirro, a former Westchester County, N.Y., district attorney and New York state judge, supported Donald Trump’s voter fraud claims and compared those who participated in the events of Jan. 6, 2021 with those who fought in the American Revolution.
The suit shows that the network executives knew that Pirro made false statements about Dominion in a November 21 broadcast.
What About the Bosses at Fox News?
Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, however, is the one person it appears is escaping internal scrutiny. Scott played a key role in Carlson’s cancellation.
She was the person at the top who pushed Mike Lindell despite his false statements, even sending him a handwritten note. Dominion noted that Lindell’s My Pillow was a major advertiser on Fox News.
Scott personally approved having Lindell on Carlson’s program on Jan. 26, 2021.
Rupert Murdoch told Scott he believed that statements made by Rudolph Guiliani and Sidney Powell on Nov. 19, 2020 were “damaging everybody.” Scott agreed. Yet, Scott, who had the authority to keep them from being booked, kept them coming and allowed her hosts to tolerate inaccurate information.
“Scott knew the statements Fox broadcast about Dominion were untrue, or recklessly disregarded the truth,” Dominion said in its suit.
Scott’s poor management and decision to put ratings and Fox’s bottom line before its journalistic integrity is damaging. She’s at the top. She made the call.
“For boards of directors, the lessons are clear: For better or worse, the CEO is often the face of the corporation. When the CEO engages in misconduct, the board has an obligation to investigate the matter, take proactive steps to ensure that it is properly dealt with, and — most important — ensure that corporate reputation, culture, and long-term performance are not damaged,” Harvard Business Review said.
Her decisions critically damaged Fox’s reputation, so now it’s up to the Fox board to decide.
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John Rossomando was a senior analyst for Defense Policy and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award in 2008 for his reporting.
