The decision to fire Tucker Carlson from his ratings juggernaut show on Fox News reportedly came straight from Rupert Murdoch.
The exact factors which contributed to the anchor’s exit have not been officially confirmed by Fox, but sources have told various outlets that there were several factors involved in the decision. Persons familiar with the situation told the Los Angeles Times that Murdoch, the Fox Corporation chairman, was concerned about Carlson’s coverage of the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, in which Carlson downplayed events as “mostly peaceful chaos” and promoted the notion that it was provoked by government agents.
Carlson was roundly criticized for his comments, including by a number of Republican senators. “The American people saw what happened on Jan. 6,” explained Senator Mitt Romney (R., Utah) to reporters. “They’ve seen the people that got injured, they saw the damage to the building. You can’t hide the truth by selectively picking a few minutes out of tapes and saying this is what went on. It’s so absurd. It’s nonsense.”
The decision to fire Carlson was also related to accusations made by Abby Grossberg, an ex-producer for Carlson, according to the L.A. Times. Grossberg was moved off of Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo and onto Tucker Carlson Tonight, where she said was bullied and subjected to antisemitic comments.
The ex-producer for Bartiromo and Carlson filed a lawsuit against Fox last month, accusing Fox lawyers of coercing her into giving misleading testimony in the legal battle with Dominion Voting Systems.
A representative from Dominion, which settled with Fox to the tune of $787.5 million, told the Los Angeles Times that Carlson’s firing was unrelated to the lawsuit, which accused Fox of defamation for allowing hosts and guests to make false election-fraud claims about the company.
However, the Dominion discovery process revealed disparaging comments Carlson made about management and others like former president Donald Trump, who the anchor said he hates passionately.
“Do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience?,” wrote Carlson a day after Fox called the election for Joe Biden, according to the Washington Post. Carlson expressed the same sentiment in another message, using an expletive: “Those f****** are destroying our credibility,” he wrote.
In a third, Carlson said, “a combination of incompetent liberals and top leadership with too much pride to back down is what’s happening.”
Carlson will not host a farewell episode of his popular program, which averaged over 3 million viewers per night. His last episode was broadcast on Friday, April 21, the network said, and an interim show featuring a rotating cast of Fox News personalities will fill the 8 p.m. hour until a new host is named.