Tucker Carlson’s Downfall

For years, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson has confronted criticisms of his amplification of racist and anti-immigrant concepts. But these points appeared to have little to do along with his demise.

Instead, a rising checklist of controversies associated to Carlson’s conduct on and off the air had begun to irritate Fox News executives, and the community abruptly introduced his departure yesterday.

Network leaders and contributors had complained, and a few stop, over Carlson’s deceptive protection of the Jan. 6 assaults, wherein he depicted rioters as “mostly peaceful” onlookers. His protection of 2020 election conspiracy theories was a part of Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit in opposition to Fox, which the community settled final week. Carlson had additionally privately denigrated Fox executives, saying they’d value the community credibility by permitting it to name President Biden’s election victory, as The Washington Post reported.

And a former producer not too long ago accused Carlson in a lawsuit of overseeing a misogynistic and discriminatory office. Fox has disputed her claims.

As one of many prime hosts on essentially the most watched cable news community, Carlson performed an outsize function in conservative politics. Today’s e-newsletter will take a look at Carlson’s affect and what his exit means for Fox News.

An enormous viewers

Carlson took over Fox News’s prized 8 p.m. slot in 2017 and elevated its already-high scores, shortly turning into a fixture on the right-wing community and in conservative politics.

How? Carlson tapped into white viewers’ fears over the nation’s altering racial demographics, which fueled Donald Trump’s rise within the 2016 election. He would commonly give attention to the notion of the “great replacement,” a racist conspiracy concept that claims elites are importing supposedly obedient immigrants to disempower native-born Americans. In 2018, Carlson argued that hordes of immigrants have been making America “poorer and dirtier.”

Carlson usually highlighted native news tales however twisted them to make broader claims about Americans shedding management of their nation. In one section in 2017, he claimed “Gypsies” have been inflicting chaos in a small Pennsylvania city, urinating and defecating within the streets.

“The message of these segments was always the same: You and your way of life are under attack, and the people doing the attacking look different and have different values than you do,” my colleague Nicholas Confessore, who lined Carlson’s rise for The Times, informed me yesterday. “Carlson reassured viewers that their discomfort was reasonable — that they didn’t have to feel bad about their fears and worries.”

Carlson did so by embracing Trumpism however not Trump himself. The strategy was partly private. In personal texts, Carlson mentioned of Trump, “I hate him passionately.” It additionally helped Carlson differentiate himself from different Fox News hosts, Nicholas mentioned. Because they aligned themselves carefully with Trump, the hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham would usually have to return to his protection when Trump mentioned one thing outrageous. Carlson tried to keep away from these pitfalls by specializing in the underlying message as an alternative of Trump as the general public face of it.

Fox’s predominantly white viewers embraced Carlson’s strategy, and he drew greater than three million viewers an evening, commonly making his present No. 1 or No. 2 on the community. And though accusations of bigotry and falsehoods prompted sponsors to flee Fox, Carlson’s present elevated its advert income as a result of its viewers was so massive.

Carlson has not mentioned what he’ll do subsequent. But with out that massive viewers, he in all probability received’t be as influential.

Uncertain future

Fox News mentioned it could rotate hosts in its 8 p.m. slot till it might discover a everlasting substitute. At first look, this appears unhealthy for the community: Not solely did it lose one in every of its largest stars, however it has no substitute lined up. And the announcement comes at a time when Fox has already confronted months of unhealthy publicity, and it simply agreed to a $787.5 million settlement over Dominion’s lawsuit.

But Fox has overcome comparable challenges with its hosts earlier than. Carlson himself changed Bill O’Reilly, who was as soon as the community’s hottest host, and never solely maintained O’Reilly’s scores however at instances surpassed them. That expertise could have led Fox to imagine that the community carries extra sway over its viewers than particular person hosts do.

The former Fox government Roger Ailes used to sometimes bench his prime time stars for an evening to point out them that the scores stayed excessive once they have been gone — demonstrating that it was Fox that made them massive, Nicholas famous. “I suspect the audience loyalty to Fox is probably greater than the audience loyalty to any particular Fox star,” he added.

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A pop track on trial

Did Ed Sheeran copy his Grammy-winning ballad “Thinking Out Loud” from Marvin Gaye’s soul traditional “Let’s Get It On”? The query is on the middle of a copyright trial that started yesterday in federal court docket in Manhattan.

Because of a quirk of music copyrights, the case rests totally on the songs’ chord progressions, that are practically an identical, as this video comparability reveals. But Sheeran’s attorneys have argued that the chords are widespread in pop music — together with in songs by artists who used them earlier than Gaye and Ed Townsend, who collaborated with him on “Let’s Get It On,” did.