A week after Fox News settled a defamation lawsuit against it by an electronic voting machine company, the right-wing news outlet and its top-rated host, Tucker Carlson have “agreed to part ways.”
Carlson, who hosted “Tucker Carlson Tonight” at 8 p.m. on weeknights, broadcast his final show on April 21st, Fox News said in a statement, and that “Fox News Tonight” will air live with rotating hosts in its place.
“Fox News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways. We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor,” the network also said on Monday.
It is not clear what Carlson plans to do next, though his website, tuckercarlson.com is still live.
Presciently, just days before Fox News announced Carlson’s departure, he was jokingly offered a job at the Heritage Foundation. Online magazine The Morning Dispatch reports that over the weekend, the foundation celebrated its 50th Anniversary Gala, which Carlson attended.
Heritage President Kevin Roberts joked with the news commentator, “If things go south at Fox News, there’s always a job for you at Heritage.”
Carlson had been with Fox News since 2009, working his way up to host his own prime-time show, “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” which became Fox’s highest-rated cable news program in the 25-to-54 age demographic.
Reuters reports that sources close to the situation said Fox Corp Chief Executive Lachlan Murdoch and Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott came to the decision regarding Carlson on Friday night and that the senior executive producer of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Justin Wells, was also let go from Fox News on Monday.
Carlson’s show provided air to conservative views, issues, and voices that were denied space by other mainstream legacy media corporations. Recent highlights of his career with Fox News included interviewing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, highlighting the damage done to young people by transgender ideology, and documenting the dangers of plastics.
In the standalone series “Tucker Carlson Originals,” his 60-minute in-depth reports have covered subjects as diverse as cattle mutilation, China, and, in what ended up being the last instalment, the latest climate activism trend—adding insects and other bugs to the ‘green’ menu.
“My wife and I were just talking about this, and we think it’s a real bummer they took him off air because he’s a true conservative voice,” said Mark Gudelman, a 67-year-old retiree, who was shopping in a Dollar General store in Shallowater, Texas, also told Reuters.
Fox shares dropped on Monday, according to Reuters, closing 2.9% lower.
The departure comes just a week after the Fox Corp media company settled for $787.5 million in the defamation lawsuit brought against it in 2021 by Dominion Voting Systems.
Dominion alleged that the news corporation had knowingly aired uncritical coverage of claims that it was involved in voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, damaging the company’s reputation and business.
In the civil case for defamation, Judge Eric Davis had already ruled in the voting machine company’s favour on March 31st.
“The evidence developed in this civil proceeding demonstrates that [it] is CRYSTAL clear that none of the statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true,” Davis wrote in an 80-page decision.
Fox settled with Dominion just minutes before the criminal trial on whether or not Fox had acted with malice was set to start. Had the case gone to trial, Carlson and other Fox News personalities would likely have had to testify.
Fox is still facing a lineup of lawsuits related to its coverage of the 2020 election results, including from Carlson’s former head of booking Abby Grossberg, who alleges a toxic work environment and that the company coerced her testimony in the Dominion case.
