The accountability-free world of Tucker Carlson
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if you want to correct your mistakes, which Fox News and Tucker Carlson very obviously don’t.
But it’s worth a review of how spectacularly wrong and misleading Carlson has been just over the past year on an array of issues that sit at the heart of the national conversation. So here’s a list — an admittedly incomplete one, as I’ll explain in a second.
He alleged that the Justice Department aimed to “tell teachers and school board members that when parents complain, it’s domestic terrorism” — a wild mischaracterization of a memo speaking out against violent threats.
He falsely stated that President Biden had warned that “White Republican men” were “more dangerous” than the Islamic State.
He produced a thoroughly debunked three-part documentary seeking to recast the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol as a function of federal provocations.
He elevated an unfounded report that unnamed co-conspirators mentioned in charging documents centered on the Capitol riot were federal agents — a claim so sloppy that it failed to realize that one of those unnamed individuals was clearly the suspect’s wife.
He hyped the idea that a man videotaped telling people on Jan. 5 that they should go into the Capitol was an FBI provocateur — a claim without any basis in evidence — only to redirect his claims, without correction, when it was revealed that the man had denied that assertion under penalty of perjury.
He aired an allegation that a man in red face paint was a federal agent, only to have it reported that he was, instead, an amateur mascot for the St. Louis Cardinals.
He was one of many on the right who claimed that the lack of charges centered on sedition undercut the idea that the riot amounted to an attempted insurrection. Sedition charges were announced Thursday. One of those charged was one of the “unnamed co-conspirators” in Carlson’s earlier coverage.
He repeatedly hosted guests who spread misinformation about the coronavirus vaccines, including Alex Berenson. He misrepresented a database of claimed side effects from the vaccines as presenting evidence of calamitous dangers.
Even after Fox News had already debunked a right-wing talking point about deaths from covid-19 and comorbidities, Carlson repeated the talking point on-air.
He asserted that “they” were “banning Dr. Seuss” after the author’s estate pulled some books from publication.
He claimed that Texas’s power outages during a deep freeze last year was a function of the state’s “total reliance” on wind turbines, which isn’t true.
He elevated unfounded claims about 2020 ballots being double-counted and tampered with in Georgia.
He claimed that the National Security Agency had targeted his communications “for political reasons” and that he had confirmed that “the Biden administration is spying on us” — claims he never substantiated. The NSA took the unusual step of publicly denying the claims; it was later reported that he had been in contact with staffers of Russian President Vladimir Putin at the time of the alleged targeting, individuals who certainly would been actual targets of the NSA.
Of course, Carlson’s program isn’t promoted as objective. It’s part of Fox News’s opinion coverage, which: fine.
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