by Sharon Rondeau
(May 9, 2023) — During the 5:00 p.m. EDT hour, former Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson announced on Twitter he will be bringing to the platform a “new version” of the show he hosted for 6.5 years, emphasizing that “truth” is paramount and often difficult to find in today’s media landscape.
“We’re back,” he captioned the video posted in his timeline. The announcement follows his April 24 termination from the highly-popular Fox program, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” which came as a surprise to many.
Reporting earlier Tuesday by Axios indicated Carlson might, in fact, be considering a partnership with Elon Musk, Twitter’s new CEO and an entrepreneur in his own right, as well as pursuing legal action against Fox for alleged breach of contract in a letter sent by the legal team with whom Carlson is working.
“The Twitter move would seem to technically violate Carlson’s contract with Fox, but his lawyers’ letter effectively holds that Fox breached the contract first,…” Axios reported.
The outlet further said:
- The lawyers accuse Fox executives — which two sources say are Dinh and Murdoch — of making “material representations,” or promises, to Carlson that were intentionally broken, constituting fraud.
- Notably, the letter alleges Fox broke an agreement with Carlson not to leak his private communications to the media and not to use Carlson’s private messages “to take any adverse employment action against him.”
- Multiple outlets have reported on Carlson’s redacted communications from pre-trial discovery documents and have suggested that they led to his ousting.
“At the most basic level, the news you consume is a lie, the lie of the stealthiest and most insidious kind,” Carlson stated in the 2:59-long video. “Facts have been withheld on purpose along with proportion and perspective. You are being manipulated.”
The media is “misleading” viewers “in every story that matters, every day of the week, every week of the year,” he continued.
In what might have been a reference to his ousting by Fox, Carlson said, “The best you can hope for in the news business at this point is the freedom to tell the fullest truth that you can. There are always limits; we know that if you bump up against those limits often enough, you will be fired for it. That’s not a guess; it’s guaranteed.”
“The rule of what you can’t say defines everything,” he stated. “It’s filthy, really, and it’s utterly corrupting. You can’t have a free society if people aren’t allowed to say what they think is true…”
He then shifted to his near-future plans, asserting that “the only big platform” currently permitting free speech is Twitter. However, he contended, “for the most part, the news that you see analyzed on Twitter comes from media organizations that are themselves thinly-disguised propaganda outlets, signifying that “the gatekeepers are still in charge.”
“We think that’s a bad system,” he said. “We know exactly how it works, and we’re sick of it. Starting soon, we’ll be bringing a new version of the show we’ve been doing for the last six and a half years to Twitter. We bring some other things, too, which we’ll tell you about, but for now we’re just grateful to be here. Free speech is the main right that you have; without it, you have no others. See you soon.”
Updated, 6:14 a.m., May 10, 2023