In the United States, the conservative news channel Fox News is now going from uproar to uproar, and in the middle of the uproar, the channel’s most popular host finds himself time and time again Tucker Carlson.
The TV channel’s Kohut reports on the 2020 US presidential election, in which the former president, the Republican Donald Trump lost the election to the Democrats For Joe Biden.
Trump famously denied right away on election night that he had lost the election and tried to overturn the election result in the following months. In the end, Trump supporters tried to prevent the change of power by storming the US Congress building on Epiphany 2021.
Fox News’ role as a spreader of Trump’s election fraud claims is again under the magnifying glass, as several voting equipment companies sued the channel. The lawsuit between the voting equipment company Dominion Voting Systems and Fox News has been particularly closely watched.
A lawsuit evidence (you switch to another service) was made public in February. Dominion’s lawyers say Fox management knew the channel was spreading lies and could have stopped them.
No one at Fox believed Trump’s words
Fox News is the most watched cable television news channel in the United States, and the channel’s most popular programs include current affairs programs hosted by Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. The trio takes turns on the screen every weekday from eight in the evening to eleven.
The communications of this trio after the election have become the focus of the lawsuit between Dominion and Fox News. From the messages published in the evidence, you can see how the presenters knew they were spreading Trump’s lies.
– Sidney Powell otherwise lies. I caught him. This is crazy, Carlson wrote to Ingraham a couple of weeks after Election Day.
– Sidney is a complete mess. Nobody wants to work with him. Same Rudy [Giulianin] with, Ingraham replied.
Powell and Giuliani were prominent figures of Trump’s legal team on Fox shows after the election.
“Our viewers are good people, and they believe him,” Carlson replied to Ingraham, referring to Powell.
Carlson also said he hated Trump.
– I hate him with a passion. He’s good at destroying things. He is the undisputed world champion of that sport, Carlson wrote.
Founder and chairman of the board of the Fox media corporation Rupert Murdoch, 91, admitted in testimony in February that Fox News spread Trump’s election lies. He admitted that he did not block Giuliani and Powell from appearing on television.
The evidence shows that Murdoch himself had said after the election that Trump’s lies were “really crazy stuff” and that Trump had become “more and more crazy”.
– Terrible stuff that I’m afraid will hurt everyone, Murdoch said after seeing Giuliani and Powell on Fox.
Fox feared competition from the far right
Despite Fox’s internal messaging, the spread of Trump’s lies continued on the channel day after day.
The channel was concerned about Trump’s supporters draining to smaller news channels that support Trump. In particular, the radical right-wing One America News and Newsmax rose to challenge Fox.
Fox management was afraid that viewers would flee, so Trump’s conspiracy theories were allowed to continue. Among Fox’s hosts, Carlson in particular quickly adapted to the spirit of the times and turned into an enthusiastic spreader of allegations of election fraud.
Very soon, Carlson began to demand the same from his colleagues. About a month after Election Day, a Fox reporter Jacqui Heinrich criticizes the speeches of the presenters of his own channel. He tweeted that there was no evidence of electoral fraud.
– Please, get him fired. Seriously… what the hell? I am devastated, this has to stop immediately, tonight. This clearly hurts the company. The share price goes down. I’m not kidding, Carlson wrote worriedly to his co-host Hannity.
Carlson’s show became a hit on Fox
Dominion is demanding about 1.5 billion euros in damages from Fox for causing damage to its reputation, but this has not made the channel stop spreading disinformation related to the 2020 election.
Among the presenters, Carlson in particular has managed to keep himself in the center of attention. The host who closely follows his own viewer numbers is particularly interested (you switch to another service) from the so-called minute-by-minute monitoring, which is used to measure the development of viewer numbers with minute accuracy.
Carlson will leave out of his next programs such topics for which the viewers have changed the channel.
Over the past year, Carlson has profiled himself as a purveyor of pro-Putin rhetoric in the United States. Carlson has consistently criticized the US support for Ukraine. Excerpts from Carlson’s program is shown regularly (you switch to another service) In the propaganda programs of the Russian state television.
Carlson’s style has worked. His show, Tucker Carlson Tonight, is on many days the most watched show on all of Fox News. Every episode last year followed live (you will switch to another service) an average of 3.3 million viewers.
Carlson has also noticed that conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election still manage to interest viewers.
He made, for example, a three-part documentary about the attack on the Congress building under the name Purge of the Patriots. In his documentary he hinted (you switch to another service)that the rioters in Congress were not actually Trump supporters, but members of the far-left Antifa organization and people staged by the federal police to impersonate the FBI.
This week, Carlson continued on the same theme. Speaker of the House, Republican Kevin McCarthy recently gave Carlson an archive of surveillance camera footage of the Capitol takeover.
McCarthy himself tries to balance between the more moderate and the more radical wing of the Republicans. The release of the tapes to Carlson was McCarthy’s concession to party radicals.
On Monday, Carlson said in your program (you switch to another service)that those who attacked the congress building “believed that the elections were organized unfairly, and they were right”.
– It is clear that the 2020 election was a serious betrayal of American democracy, Carlson said.
In his program, Carlson downplayed the violence of the attack on the congress building and described the protesters as having been in the congress building instead as “on a tour”.
Police chief responsible for the security of the Congress building Tom Manger criticize harshly (you move to another service) Carlson’s claims. According to him, the program was “offensive and misleading” and was based on “conveniently selected moments” from a total of 41,000 hours of video footage.
Will Fox Get Off Trump’s Leash?
Fox News has been dancing on a tightrope with Trump and his supporters for years.
In the summer of 2015 Murdoch asked in his tweet (you will switch to another service), when will Trump stop embarrassing his friends and his entire country. At that time, Trump had just registered as a candidate for the presidential race, and Fox did not know how to predict Trump’s ascension to the leadership of the United States.
After Trump won the Republican nomination and later the 2016 presidential election, Fox News positioned itself as the most staunch Trump supporter in the American mainstream media.
Recently, however, Fox News has tried to make a stronger break with Trump, and the former president has not been able to appear on the channel in the old way.
Leaving Trump out has been interpreted as Murdoch’s decision so that the Republicans would choose a fresh candidate for the 2024 presidential election. The new regular guest on Fox’s evening shows is the governor of Florida Ron DeSantiswho is widely considered Trump’s most viable challenger in the Republican internal race.
However, Trump knows that if he covers his challenger in the Republican primaries, Fox’s support will be clear to him again.
Trump himself has been raging at Murdoch for the past few days. Trump wrote (you are switching to another service) last week on his own social media service that everyone at Fox should follow Carlson’s example.
– Rupert Murdoch should apologize to his viewers and readers for his ridiculous defense of the 2020 presidential election. He should also apologize to his news anchors who interpreted the election correctly — and fire those who misinterpreted the election or were afraid to speak up, Trump said.
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