Just when I thought I was out …: Tucker Carlson goes on RCP‘s “Changing Lanes” to defend spiking Daily Caller pieces critical of Fox News, which employs him as a Fox & Friends co-host. I’m sick of this fight too, so I’ll be quick. 1) Tucker’s “rule” has the virtue of honesty. Better blatant than latent. 2) But he wasn’t transparent about it when he hired me — he didn’t tell me. Nor did he tell me about this seemingly significant “rule” in the years I wrote for him, before he spiked the column. (I wrote at least 3 earlier Fox-trashing items. A mid-level editor gave me some guff for a couple of them but didn’t take them down or talk about a “rule.”) 3) I would hope that if Tucker had told me about the Rule I wouldn’t have taken my blog to his site. Who knows? 4) The Rule is not sustainable. We’re about to enter a media driven Republican presidential primary in which Fox is accused, not without basis, of favoring Jeb Bush. Daily Caller reporters can’t write about that? Insane. 5) Note that if you “can’t trash Fox on the site,” that means everything Daily Caller writes about Fox is suspect (of being BS) since they are presumably leaving out any bad parts, even if true. 6) Would Fox really insist on this “rule,” or is Tucker just being unnecessarily chicken? It’s not a conflict if Fox can tolerate criticism! I suspect they can’t, and Tucker is not being paranoid.
Update: Mediaite says it
has reached out to Fox and they told us explicitly that there has been no mandate [not to criticize it] whatsoever. Also from what we’ve been able to glean from others inside Fox, no one there really cares whether The Daily Caller criticizes them or not.
I’m skeptical. Fox’s PR department is famously aggressive and attentive. (“Fox watches very carefully what’s being said about them in the media. People assume Fox isn’t watching what’s being said about it, but it is,” a former Fox producer told the Washington Examiner.) One question left to ask Tucker — if anyone’s still interested in this incident (doubtful) — is whether anybody at Fox contacted him about the piece the morning he spiked it. I don’t know the answer.
Why Tucker Carlson’s “no trashing Fox” rule is honest, but insane http://t.co/ddSTgeJ8sj
First rule of Fight Club: Don’t talk about the rule. People with bad rules want to hide them. Besides Tucker’s ridiculous rule there’s the rule at Fox: Don’t criticize immigration ‘reform.’ You can bend that, but their bias is ridiculous when their base is totally against it, as you’ve said. O’Reilly would outdo Obama by legalizing all 11 million.
The whole American elite is ridiculously biased for reform, the American people are totally against it, and the elite does NOT want to talk about the bias in all their immi news coverage. That’s why your firing has been hushed up as much as possible, even Brian Stelter didn’t want to mention ‘immigration’ – you had to drag it up, he would have been happy talking about Fox’s bias on left-right, or some such nonsense. The liberal press has an easy chance to pound Fox in your case, which they would love, but they won’t bring up immi coverage, so they pass.
It’s similar in Europe too: elite vs the people on ‘reform.’
The one question left to ask @TuckerCarlson–see Update. #ifanyonestillcares #understandableiftheydont http://t.co/ddSTgeJ8sj
Fox and Tucker are vile. I used to love Tucker, but now he is just one more crony capitalist who will lie and censor on behalf of out of touch Washington establishment that HATE voters.
Tucker and Daily Caller – glad Munro left.
Republicans for Hillary. Just to irritate Tucker and Fox.
Kaus’s final Q for Tucker: Did anyone from Fox contact Tucker abt Kaus piece before Tucker spiked it? Good question http://t.co/Yuf02fYogg
“[A] media driven Republican presidential primary in which Fox is accused,not without basis,of favoring Jeb Bush” http://t.co/VlpU5jjK5D