Tucker Carlson, journalistic ethics, Russia and coherence in the cause of Freedom

@ElentirENG ES 4·26·2023 · 7:10 0

In the last few hours, a lot has been said about the march of Tucker Carlson from Fox News. Let's try to clarify a bit.

Patriotism and the Russian invasion: Do you ask of Ukraine what you would not accept for your country?
Ten facts right-wing people who sympathize with Vladimir Putin seem to ignore

The cause of the split between Fox News and Tucker Carlson

On Monday, Fox News announced that Fox News and Carlson are parting ways. The popular communicator leaves the network in the middle of a legal case that began in March 2021 when Dominion Voting Systems filed a lawsuit against Fox News for defamation in the amount of 1.6 billion dollars, after being repeatedly accused and without evidence by Carlson of having rigged the 2020 US presidential election in favor of Joe Biden. Some accusations that Carlson himself did not believe in private, as several emails contributed by the plaintiffs to the legal case have proven.

The lawsuit, filed in Delaware Superior Court, was finally settled last week with a $787.5 million deal between Dominion and Fox News. On Tuesday, April 18, announcing that settlement via a press release, Fox News stated: "We are pleased to have reached a settlement of our dispute with Dominion Voting Systems. We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false. This settlement reflects FOX’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards."

Freedom and journalistic ethics

Some supporters of Carlson are attributing his supposed dismissal (Fox News talks about separation, and from what it seems he intends to be friendly) to the pressure of globalism to censor a communicator uncomfortable for his conservative ideas. Indeed, for years Carlson has been very courageous in his criticism of abortion, gender ideology, and other ideological tenets of the left. It cannot be ruled out that there was pressure on Fox News to achieve this dismissal and thus shut down one of the best-known conservative voices in the US. But it must be recognized that Carlson himself made it easy for those who sought to silence him, giving them free ammunition against him with his false accusations.

Carlson's followers should be the first to be angry with that communicator, for having tried to convince them of the veracity of serious accusations without having evidence to prove them. From these pages I have said many times that we must be critical of what we read, in order to avoid being manipulated by anyone. That critical sense should be applicable to any medium, including those that have an editorial line that coincides with our way of thinking.

The cause of Freedom and Carlson's pro-Russian propaganda

For the rest, the cause of Liberty demands coherence from those who defend it. It would be hypocritical to demand that Freedom for oneself and at the same time support a tyranny that tramples it for millions of people. Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Carlson has been one of the main US propagandists of the Kremlin theses, trying to make the US reaction to that aggression dominated by fear of Russia and not for the sense of Justice, and opposing the sanctions against Russia and the shipment of arms to Ukraine.

As early as December 2021, before the invasion and when the Russians had been amassing troops along the Ukrainian border for months, Carlson called on the US not to get involved in it. In January, on his Fox News show, he called for disengagement from Ukraine with statements like these: "Ukraine is a pretty small country, really. It's in Eastern Europe. It's 5,000 miles from Washington." And while Russia had been preparing for the invasion for months, Carlson blamed the neocons in the US: "It is yet another manufactured crisis, this one devised by restless, power-hungry neocons in Washington looking for another war." It is a speech very similar to the propaganda of the extreme left.

On February 23, 2022, the day before the invasion and when it was already had been announced by Putin on the 22nd, Carlson accused the Democratic Party of promoting "hate" of Putin. I can think of many criticisms that can be made of that party, starting with its position on abortion, but victimizing an aggressor is something base.

On February 24, 2022, the same day the invasion began, Carlson stated: "This debate is framed exclusively in moral terms, and those are important. We shouldn't ignore them, but they're not the only terms we should consider. The fact is that Vladimir Putin has the power to send Europe and, for that matter, potentially the United States, into an economic depression. Putin has the power to turn off the lights."

Like other pro-Russian propagandists, Carlson also contributed to propagating hoaxes against Ukraine, such as the alleged biological weapons laboratories about which neither Russia nor anyone has provided even the slightest evidence. The Fox News host's position was so pro-invaders that the Kremlin ended up recommending its propagandists use Carlson's claims to favor Russia. Perhaps in gratitude for those favours, on Monday Russian state propaganda outlet RT offered Carlson a job.

Coherence in the defense of freedom

Sometimes it seems that you have to remember the obvious. Supporting a criminal dictatorship like Putin's is not what one expects from a defender of Freedom. Favoring those who are torturing and murdering Ukrainian civilians, including children, is not what one expects of a pro-life communicator. Whitewashing a superpower that is threatening Western countries, acting like a neighborhood bully who doesn't tolerate anyone going against his whims, is not what one expects from a Western conservative.

Some conservatives in the US and Europe have taken terribly wrong sides in this war. Faced with this criminal invasion, we should follow the example of the conservative governments of Poland, the Czech Republic and Italy, which are supporting the cause of Freedom and the national independence of Ukraine in the face of the Russian invasion. Putin is not a conservative: he is an imperialist fanatic who does not respect human rights, and for this reason has refused to condemn the crimes of communism and is dedicating himself to laundering Stalin. I don't understand how there can be conservatives who defend him.

---

Photo: AP Photo/Richard Drew.