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Report: Tucker Carlson’s Firing From Fox News Part of Settlement With Dominion

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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


A new report appears to shed more light on why Fox News decided to take its biggest star off the air late last month.

According to a report by RadarOnline.com, Tucker Carlson was told by network brass he was being let go as part of Fox News’ massive $787.5 million defamation settlement with Dominion Voting Systems.

“In the latest development to come three weeks after Carlson was removed from his role at the network on April 24, it has been reported that one of Fox Corp.’s eight board members was the one to tell the fired host that his ‘recent benching’ was the result of the secret condition in the Dominion settlement,” the outlet reported.

The report continued: “According to Variety, the conversation between Carlson and the board member took place on April 26 – two days after the network announced Carlson’s involuntary departure from the company. The board member also reportedly told Carlson that the secret condition ensuring Carlson’s canning would not be found in any of the $787.5 million defamation settlement documents because it was a verbal agreement.”

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If the network did not agree to those terms, then Dominion’s attorneys said the firm was prepared to call off the settlement and restart negotiations or take the case to trial, RadarOnline.com noted.

“That condition was intended to hurt Fox, and Tucker is just collateral damage,” a source familiar with the reported secret agreement told Variety. “Dominion wanted to punish Fox, and it’s working.”

But RadarOnline.com added that officials with the voting systems firm denied any secret arrangement had been made. “As the Fox principals who negotiated the settlement well know, Dominion made no demands about Tucker Carlson’s employment orally or in writing,” Dominion said in a statement to the outlet.

“Any claims otherwise are categorically false and a thinly veiled effort to further damage Dominion,” the firm noted further. “Fox should take every effort to stop these lies immediately.”

During an interview with Chris Cuomo of News Nation earlier this month, Bill O’Reilly — the former Fox News host who previously occupied the coveted primetime 8 PM time slot — argued that he believes Carlson was fired because the network is facing a slew of lawsuits related to the 2020 election.

The network also has an ongoing lawsuit filed by former Fox News booker Abby Grossberg.

“Because the pending litigation was harpooned this morning. Carlson didn’t know. It just happened. And that’s the nature of television news, the most wicked industry in the United States of America,” O’Reilly said.

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“Tucker Carlson took over from me. For the first three years, his ratings were soft. He lost about a million, maybe a little bit more of my audience, and then in 2020, he took a hard right turn,” O’Reilly said. “Carlson basically programmed for a very hard right audience, and his numbers came up.”

Soon after news of Carlson’s firing, reports shed light on who made the final decision to cut ties with the top host.

A new report reveals that Lachlan Murdoch, the chief executive of Fox Corporation, and Suzanne Scott, chief executive of Fox News Media, decided on a Friday night to fire Carlson.

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Scott informed Carlson on Monday morning of the decision.

“The power that Mr. Carlson, 53, wielded outside Fox News could not insulate him from a growing list of troubles inside the network related to his conduct on and off the air, some of which had been grating on Mr. Murdoch and his father, Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of Fox Corporation, who co-founded the network in 1996, according to the two people with knowledge of the company’s decision,” the New York Times reported.

The NYT report then suggested Carlson’s three-part segment detailing the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was a “point of contention.”

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