Fox chairman Rupert Murdoch ordered presenter Tucker Carlson’s firing on Monday over a discrimination lawsuit filed by a former producer on his show, according to multiple media reports.
Murdoch was also “concerned” about Carlson’s insistence that undercover government agents were involved in the January 6 insurrection, an allegation that has no factual basis, according to The New York Times.
In March, Abby Grossberg, a producer who formerly worked on Carlson’s show, filed a suit saying that lawyers for the network “coached” and “intimidated” her into giving misleading testimony in the lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems.
She also alleged a culture of sexism and misogyny at the network, and that executives tried to blame her and host Maria Bartiromo for the airing of 2020 election conspiracy theories.
While The New York Times reports that the dismissal wasn’t related to the Dominion lawsuit, it notes that comments made about managers at the network, which were revealed in the case’s discovery process, “may have also played a role” in his ousting.
Neither was the dismissal linked to that of Don Lemon from CNN, which was also reported Monday.
US veteran media reporter Brian Stelton tweeted on Monday: To be clear: “Fox News did not know that CNN was terminating Don Lemon today and CNN did not know that Fox was ousting Tucker Carlson. This was a complete and crazy coincidence”.
Carlson’s departure from Fox News comes days after its parent company paid a major settlement to Dominion Voting Systems to settle its defamation lawsuit stemming from false claims of fraud that the network aired after the 2020 election. Carlson, among other Fox personalities, made such statements.
