The perception has been that Tucker Carlson is leading Fox News viewers to more racism, but it turns out that it is the viewers leading Carlson.
Via: The New York Times:
According to three former Fox employees, Mr. Carlson was among the network’s most avid consumers of what are known as minute-by-minutes — ratings data on an audience’s real-time ebb and flow. “He is going to double down on the white nationalism because the minute-by-minutes show that the audience eats it up,” said a former employee who worked frequently with Mr. Carlson.
Network executives soon began applying the approach to the daytime news shows. They pitched it as “Moneyball” for television: an audience-first approach to deciding what to cover and how to cover it.
Journalists on Fox’s daytime shows discerned a pattern to what the audience didn’t like: segments featuring Fox’s own reporters, stories deemed unfavorable to Mr. Trump, left-leaning or independent guests. Immigration, on the other hand, was a hit.
It isn’t Tucker Carlson who is making Fox more racist. Fox News viewers were already racist, and the empty integrity deficient Carlson is more than happy to give the viewers what they want.
The point is that it isn’t Carlson, Trump, or Fox that are making Republicans racist. Republicans are already racist, and people like Tucker Carlson are the symptom, not the cause.
Racism is firmly baked into the DNA of the American right. Getting rid of Trump, Fox News, and Tucker Carlson won’t change anything. They would all be replaced by someone or something else.
One of the two major political parties in the United States has a substantial portion of its membership that has embraced white nationalism and racism.
This isn’t a media problem. It’s an American problem.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
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