The controversial former Fox News host Tucker Carlson has announced the next destination for his program: Twitter. Carlson told the news to his 7.2 million Twitter followers yesterday in a video posted to his account.
We’re back. pic.twitter.com/sG5t9gr60O
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) May 9, 2023
In his video, Carlson bemoans how the media will often tell "factually accurate" stories that actually aren't "true" but rather misleadingly framed. He says the media does this "every day, every week, every year," but a real truthteller's job is to frame a story that most accurately represents the "truth." He says those who bump against the limits of this "media rule" will be fired from their position.
There is still no official reason given about why Carlson was suddenly fired from Fox News in April, but many inferred Carlson was referring to his own departure from Fox with that statement.
At the moment, some suspect that Carlson's alleged role in spreading falsehoods about Dominion Voting Machines, which led the company to sue Fox News and ultimately receive over $785 million in an 11th-hour settlement, may have led to his departure. Others have speculated that text messages sent by Carlson, which included a statement about how "white men fight" discovered in the days after the settlement, were enough to convince Fox heads to part ways with him.
Carlson went on to call Twitter a "non-partisan" outlet and that it is the only place on the internet and in the media that still allows "free speech."
Twitter CEO Elon Musk has repeatedly claimed his goal is to make Twitter a bastion of "free speech," but critics say his erratic leadership and capricious attitude towards bans and spreading misinformation about his critics have bumped up against that ideal.
For his part, Musk insisted that neither he nor Twitter had signed Carlson to any sort of deal, and said an advantage of Twitter was that "unlike the one-way street of broadcast, people [on Twitter] are able to interact, critique and refute whatever he or anyone may say."
As social media waits to see what Carlson's "show" will look like on Twitter, there's reason to suspect it won't be a simple reboot of his Fox News program. In a video he posted shortly after his firing, Carlson stated, "When you take a little time off, you realize how unbelievably stupid the debates you see on television are, they’re completely irrelevant. They mean nothing. In five years, we won’t even remember that we had them. Trust me as someone who participated."
Viewers of Carlson's Fox program joked that Carlson may have been losing steam in his final months. In September last year, Carlson was forced to describe a Japanese art trend with the phrase exploding milk p--- live on air. In January, viewers felt Carlson looked "at the end of his rope" ahead of discussing a so-called plus-sized M&M.
This is so unbelievably funny genuinely no notes pic.twitter.com/6vV3TGXY2h
— DJ LEASHKID (@leash_kid_) January 11, 2023
As for whether Carlson would find the same success on Twitter as he had on Fox News, some were doubtful. On Fox, Carlson often had the task of explaining particularly online phenomena to an audience of non-online folks. Some felt Twitter was not the demographic for his style.
Display Comments