“How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles determined they needed to preserve order when nobody else would?” Carlson requested viewers.Social media lit up with denunciations and requires Carlson’s firing. But when historical past is any information, there can be no inside fallout because of his newest stunning assertion.Carlson is without doubt one of the Fox Information Channel’s most respected belongings and he’s compensated accordingly. In my new e book “Hoax,” I report that he makes about $10 million a yr.Why? As a result of his eight p.m. program “Tucker Carlson Tonight” attracts a giant viewers that feels alienated from the remainder of the media panorama. Final month Carlson averaged 4 million viewers an evening, almost doubling the present on Fox that airs one hour earlier, “The Story.”Carlson is the right-wing equal of must-see-TV. Because of this, he has the backing of Fox Company CEO Lachlan Murdoch and an enormous quantity of autonomy.This is the reason it is very important comply with the thousands and thousands. Throughout my analysis for “Hoax,” which is subtitled “Donald Trump, Fox Information, and the Harmful Distortion of Fact,” I interviewed quite a few correspondents and producers who stated they wished administration would rein Carlson in.They cited examples like his December 2018 remark that mass immigration “makes our nation poorer, and dirtier, and extra divided” and his August 2019 assertion that white supremacy is a “hoax.”However Carlson has an alliance of types with Murdoch, eldest son of Rupert, the Fox patriarch. It was Rupert who picked Carlson to succeed Invoice O’Reilly in 2017, sources on the firm stated. And it was Lachlan who backed Carlson amid controversy after controversy within the Trump period, they stated.The sources stated there are a few components at play: Lachlan shares his father’s contempt for being bullied by the “liberal media.” He by no means desires to look to offer in to left-wing advert boycotts. And he thinks Carlson’s overarching messages are worth defending.Each males fancy themselves to be contrarians and revel in philosophical conversations. They’re solely two years aside in age. And, pre-pandemic, they dined collectively once they occurred to be in the identical metropolis.Lachlan Murdoch’s precedence, in keeping with sources and his personal public statements, is the corporate’s income. Murdoch will not be particularly engaged within the editorial facet of Fox Information. His curiosity is in rising the enterprise, which is on a path to $2 billion in annual income.”You realize,” a Fox government joked throughout my reporting, “we print cash within the basement.”Fox income via subscriber charges and promoting gross sales. Carlson’s program has turned off many advertisers, resulting from a litany of scandals and offensive segments, however he nonetheless garners assist from some key sponsors.Earlier this summer season the analytics agency iSpot.television estimated that Carlson “accounts for 16% of Fox Information advert income.”His greatest advertiser by far is MyPillow, the manufacturing firm based by Mike Lindell, who’s intently aligned with President Trump.Lindell underwrites Fox’s programming by spending tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars} on adverts for pillows and different merchandise.Based on iSpot.television, “almost half MyPillow’s annual spend of $75 million was spent on Carlson’s present,” twice its funding in 9 p.m. host Sean Hannity or 10 p.m. host Laura Ingraham.In some methods MyPillow has propped up Carlson as different advertisers have fled.Fox spokespeople have known as previous boycott campaigns “agenda-driven intimidation efforts.” In non-public, executives instructed me it was “financial harassment” designed to place Fox Information out of enterprise.”We do not cling expertise out to dry,” an government instructed me in a second of candor, “as a result of when you cave to those lunatics, you will not have any reveals left.”And what in regards to the rank-and-file Fox staffers who stated they loathed Carlson? They’re simply “social justice warriors,” this government stated, utilizing the pejorative time period for progressives that was in vogue amongst conservatives.As for Carlson, he didn’t reply to requests for feedback from CNN Enterprise in regards to the criticism of his Wednesday section.
