Earlier this year, Tucker Carlson’s departure from Fox News sent shockwaves through politics and media. The news network unexpectedly parted ways with its top-rated host for seemingly unknown reasons. Carlson has remained relatively quiet on his firing but recently shed more light on some of the secrets at Fox News.
Tucker maintains that he doesn’t know the exact reason why he was fired from the network. Although he mentions the slew of unapologetic, unpopular opinions Carlson would often broadcast on his show, which could’ve potentially influenced his departure from Fox News.
“I don’t know why I was fired. I mean, it kind of isn’t an Agatha Christie story. There are like so many suspects. You know what I mean? But I don’t know, I was never told I can only speculate. There were a lot of different things going on. I had a lot of opinions that were unpopular, you know, with people who might have influenced my show getting canceled, so I really don’t know,” Tucker said.
The former host also noted that it isn’t entirely unheard of for a highly-rated personality to be fired from a network, pointing out that the cable news industry is much more nuanced and intricate than simply relying on baseline ratings as the sole driver of business decisions.
“I will say, you know, right after it happened, people said, well, how can they fire the top guy and because that’s what it is. I’m certainly not the first high-rated host to get fired. It’s not only about ratings, there are a lot of different factors. It’s a big company you all have worked for and run big companies. And you know, it’s, there’s a lot of complicated stuff going on. And it’s never exactly clear. You know why things happen the way they do, but I was not shocked by it. I was shocked by it in the short-term sense. I didn’t expect that my show canceled that morning, but, but I was not shocked at all,” he added.
Tucker continued explaining that he doesn’t harbor any resentment or negativity toward his firing, especially when it is the sole right of the owners of Fox News to determine the status of his employment. According to Carlson, his aforementioned unpopular opinions make this even less surprising.
“When I thought about it for a minute I’d expected that you know, you can kind of give the finger to everybody and persist in a in a corporate job. So I No hard feelings and I and I in fact, I said that on the call when I received the news. It’s not my company. And I never felt like I had a right to be on the air. I was I was working at the pleasure of the family that runs the company who treated me very well and and, and they wanted me off and so I was,” he said.
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Carlson further pulled back the curtains on the influence of advertisers, who funnel money into shows, which heavily influences the nature of the programming. Tucker particularly called out big pharma as the largest advertiser on television.
“Oh, well it not only existed, it defined news coverage, especially on pharma you know, because pharma is the biggest advertiser and television is, you know, and so for sure, I mean, if you know Pfizer sponsoring your show, you’re not going to question the vax. I mean, it’s kind of that simple. So absolutely. And of course, that’s why they’re the biggest advertisers so they can shape news coverage,” Carlson stated.
Note: The featured image is a screenshot from the embedded video.