According to Variety, insider sources said Tucker Carlson spoke with one of Fox Corp.’s board members. In that conversation, the board member, Variety claims, disclosed to Tucker that his suspension was a condition of Fox News’ settlement with Dominion Voting Systems. Further, though the alleged condition was not written down, it was verbally conveyed as a condition for the closure of the settlement.
Well, with Fox News ratings crashing with Tucker gone and the network looking set on bowing to demands of censorship by firing Tucker at Dominion’s behest, Variety alleges that numerous current hosts at Fox News are set on leaving Fox News Channel when their contracts are up to work with Tucker on his Twitter-based show. Variety reported:
Carlson’s Twitter move could have additional reverberations with talent at the network. A handful of Fox anchors have reached out to Carlson directly or had their surrogates contact him to say they are eager to join whatever venture he starts on Twitter when their contracts are up, according to sources.
Continuing, Variety went on to add a few details about Tucker’s upcoming show on Twitter and how it might be monetized, saying:
Twitter owner Elon Musk stressed that Carlson does not have a deal with the social media giant. “[W]e have not signed a deal of any kind whatsoever,” he recently tweeted. “Tucker is subject to the same rules & rewards of all content creators.” As for how Carlson could monetize his mega following on Twitter, Musk also recently detailed how any such arrangement would work, noting that the company will take nothing the first year and then 10% on content subscriptions thereafter. Ever since Carlson interviewed Musk in mid-April, the two have been in constant communication, says a source familiar with their dealings. (Perhaps surprisingly, Carlson has been texting with recently ousted CNN anchor Lemon and also has been in talks with Kelly to appear as a guest on her titular SiriusXM show.) As for Carlson’s relationship with his former bosses, that source says he still has some affection for Lachlan Murdoch and doesn’t blame the scion for being sidelined.
Tucker, when he took to Twitter in a widely-viewed video to announce his soon-to-be released show on Twitter, said:
“Hey, it’s Tucker Carlson, you often hear people say the news is full of lies. But most of the time, that’s not exactly right. Much of what you see on television or read the New York Times, is in fact true in the literal sense, it could pass one of the media’s own fact checks, lawyers would be willing to sign off on it. In fact, they may have. But that doesn’t make it true. It’s not true.
“At the most basic level, the news you consume is a lie, a lie of the stealthiest and most insidious kind. facts have been withheld on purpose, along with proportion and perspective, you are being manipulated. How does that work? Let’s see, if I tell you that a man has been unjustly arrested for armed robbery that is not strictly speaking a lie. He may have been framed at this point, there’s been no trial, so no one can really say.
“But if I don’t mention the fact that the same man has been arrested for the same crime six times before, am I really informing you? No, I’m not. I’m misleading you. And that’s what the news media are doing in every story that matters every day of the week, every week of the year. What’s it like to work in a system like that? After more than 30 years, in the middle of it, we could tell you stories, the best you could hope for in the news business at this point is the freedom to tell the fullest truth that you can.
“But there are always limits. And you know that if you bump up against those limits, often enough, you will be fired for it. That’s not a guess. It’s guaranteed. Every person who works in English language media understands that the rule of what you can’t say defines everything. It’s filthy, really. And it’s utterly corrupting.
“You can’t have a free society if people aren’t allowed to say what they think is true. Speech is the fundamental prerequisite for democracy. That’s why it’s enshrined in the first of our constitutional amendments. Amazingly, as of tonight, there aren’t many platforms left that allow free speech. The last big one remaining in the world, the only one is Twitter, where we are now. Twitter has long served as the place where our national conversation incubates and develops. Twitter is not a partisan site, everybody’s allowed here. And we think that’s a good thing.
“And yet, for the most part, the news that you see analyzed on Twitter comes from media organizations that are themselves thinly disguised propaganda outlets. You see it on cable news, you talk about it on Twitter. The result may feel like a debate, but actually the gatekeepers are still in charge. We think that’s a bad system. We know exactly how it works, and we’re sick of it.
“Starting soon, we’ll be bringing a new version of the show we’ve been doing for the last six and a half years to Twitter. We bring some other things to which we’ll tell you about. But for now, we’re just grateful to be here. Free speech is the main right that you have without it, you have no others. See you soon”
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