The Press Box - Brian Stelter on Tucker Carlson, Don Lemon, and a Crazy Week in Cable News

Episode Date: April 28, 2023

Bryan is joined by Brian Stelter to talk about Tucker Carlson’s departure from Fox News, what may have caused it, and what's next for Carlson. They also discuss the Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems settlement and how the network may change going forward. Later, they talk about Don Lemon’s departure from CNN and what it means for the network. Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Brian Stelter Associate Producer Carlos Chiriboga Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everyone, it's Ariel Hawani, and I wanted to let you know that each and every week, I'm part of a great program called The Ringer MMA Show. I hosted alongside two absolutely brilliant minds. Their names, Chuck Mendenhall and Pizzie Carroll. And every Thursday, a new episode drops where we preview the weekend in mixed martial arts and react to all the biggest news. Plus, after every UFC pay-per-view, we give you a post-fight show. So this is what you have to do.

Just follow the Ringer MMA show on your Spotify app. So you don't miss an episode. We'll talk to you then. Hello, media consumers. Welcome to Press Box final edition. Brian Curtis of the Ringer here, along with producer Carlos Chiroboga, who's sitting in for Erica.

This is the week that cable news became president. Our guest today has reported on cable news. He sat in the anchor's chair at CNN. Now he's back on the beat writing for Vanity Fair and working on a new book about Fox News, which will be published in November. Brian Stelter, Welcome back to the press box.

Oh, man. It's good to be here. I can't believe we're here. So between Tucker Carlson being out, Don Lemon being out, NBC Universal's Jeff Shell being out, and Jerry Springer departing this world, is this the busiest week you've had on the media beat? You know, yes and no, because I'm really enjoying my kind of unemployed phase of life, you know.

I'm like sort of in between jobs after getting booted from CNN. and so I don't have to jump at every story and rush onto TV to talk about it. But, you know, I've been writing columns for Vanity Fair, doing podcasting for Vanity Fair, writing for various places. And I've got to tell you, Brian, I've got a dozen stories that I want to write right now. There are a dozen pieces that I would like to be writing at this moment.

And as, as you know, I was making you wait to talk to me, I was still typing as you were doing your intro because I'm just filing to my editor another column. there's just so much to try to process about this week. But hey, that's what we can do now right here. Let's start with Tucker Carlson, who was let go by Fox News on Monday. Why did Fox get rid of him? Why did Fox get rid of him?

So we're talking on Friday. This happened on Monday. I don't think we have the entire story yet. But I'm thinking about it like a bad breakup. I'm thinking about it like a situation where, I mean, And I'm thankfully, I'm happily married, but I'm trying to think back to the days, you know, my dating life, right, where something's not going well. You end up calling things off.

Usually it's one person that ends it and the other might pretend it was mutual, but, you know, it's clear someone called up. So what happens in those cases usually is that it's not one thing, right? You know, sure, if some guy's cheating and the girl finds out and whatever. But most of the time, it's an accumulation of resentments and disputes and slight. and petty grievances and big screw-ups. And, you know, it's usually all of it. And I think that's what's happened with Carlson and Fox.

I think every theory you've read this week is real. I think every source story is probably true. I think it wasn't one thing. It was everything. And I mean Carlson's lying about January 6th. And I mean the advertiser issues. And I mean Rupert Murdoch breaking off his engagement and with a woman who loved Tucker.

And I'm talking about the text messages. Clearly, Carlson disparaging his bosses using hateful language. Talk about his colleagues. All of it. What do you think? Do you buy it, Brian? It's a breakup. Yeah, I like that.

I guess my question would be how many of the grievances were about things that Tucker Carlson actually said on Fox's air? I think that was a relatively small slice of the story. Look, there's a Wall Street. general story, Washington owned by the Murdox that says, you know, some Fox up higher-ups, some people high up at Fox, were troubled by the racist comments and commentary on Carlson's show. So that's certainly an indication. That was one of the factors. I do believe the January 6 material may have been one of the factors. You know, remember when Carlson got a hold of

those surveillance tapes from Kevin McCarthy and then tried to air them in such a way that was just so misleading. Remember other Fox shows didn't follow up? Do you remember that? Like Hannity didn't come on an hour later and say, this is an amazing, important, breaking news story. The next morning, Fox and Friends did not lead with Tucker Carlson's big so-called scoop about January 6th. The newscast did not run with it and say, oh my God, can you believe Tucker Carlson's revealed the truth about January 6? None of that happened. It was like Carlson was on an island and the other shows couldn't even hear his voice. and I think that we're going to look back and say, oh, that was a hint of what's happening here. Fox and Carlson were breaking up.

They were having, they were already going through a breakup, but Carlson had not been dumped yet. In Fox's statement on Monday, they noted Carlson would not be getting to say goodbye to viewers on television. What's significant about a cable host not getting a final show? Oh, man. I mean, it's everything. It's so significant. I was there. This happened to me last August.

So, you know, when my show was canceled, we had a conversation about next steps. I think not so dissimilar from what happens in other cases in television news about how to announce it. But I was very lucky. I was treated with a lot of respect. I was given a chance to sign off on the air. And I took that chance and I had a final broadcast. And it meant a lot to me. But I also think more importantly, it meant a lot to the viewers, at least some of the viewers.

Because, you know, they liked this show. now it's going away. We had a chance to talk about it. We would have do it in a respectful way, a mutually respectful way. And that's exactly what Carlson was denied. There was no final show. There was no goodbye message on the air. There was no way for Carlson to come on and say, sign up for my substack, which, like, I didn't do that, but I thought about it, you know. Sean Spicer did that a few weeks ago. Sean Spicer's show ended at Newsmax. He said they just couldn't reach a new contract. And so he went on and he said, follow me on YouTube, follow me on Twitter, you know, like he was giving all of his promotional stuff as he signed off

of his show. That is the courteous way to do it, right? That is the polite. That's the dream scenario for a canceled television host. There are other scenarios, you know, and we've seen this last year at MSNBC. We've now seen it at Fox. We've seen it at CNN this week with Don Lemon, where the host does not get to say goodbye. And I think that's just very revealing when they don't get to say goodbye. You've covered Carlson for a decade plus. What was it like to text and email with him? Oh, well, you know, Carlson and I have a strange history. When I launched my TV news blog, TV newser 19, almost 20 years ago, he donated to my blog. This was back in the days when, like, you'd put out a tip jar and people could like PayPal you or something. And he was a donor. He really

liked what I was doing. He was a fan of the blog. He actually booked me on his MSNBC show to talk about my experience as a college blogger. And, you know, in that way, I think he was savvy about knowing media reporters. I think what you see there by him booking me on MSNBC was, you know, being in touch with people who cover him, who write about him. And so let's fast forward almost 20 years, you know, I wrote a book about Fox called Hoax in 2020. Carlson obviously was a story in that book. Up until 2022, he would troll me. The last time he texted me was around this time last year, and he was texting me about the speculation that I might get fired from CNN, which turned turned out to be true. But by then, he was just trolling me, and I wasn't, I didn't want to

play anymore. Like, there was no reason for me to reply to him. You know, he wasn't, he wasn't asking for comment in good faith. He was just trolling. So, so I stopped, I stopped engaging. I did reach out to him this week, though, see if he'd comment on his firing. and he did not respond. No word from him. The only word, I mean, the two words we've heard from him, right, the two times we've heard from him this week were a long golf course, right? He was spotted by the Daily Mail.

You always wonder in these cases if the Daily Mail was told where to be when, because that does sometimes happen, right, in the celebrity world. So, you know, we see him coming down the golf cart, all, you know, smiles, all Florida tan, you know, so cheery with his wife. It was actually a brilliant little bit of stagecraft. right, whether it was staged or not. Like, he looked like a man who was overjoyed. You know, he joked about being happy in retirement.

I thought it was super savvy of him to do that. And then there was a little Twitter video he released, which I believe was more of a rushed kind of spontaneous thing. Like he just, you know, wanted to show people that he wasn't going to stay silent. But, you know, in both of those, I think what we see is where he's going to go. He's going to be back. He's going to have a platform. It might not be as big as Fox, but he's not going to, you know, hang out in Florida

are in Maine and just enjoy his vacation homes. So you just filed a column, as you mentioned. What have you learned about what Tucker's going to do next? I did. And, you know, our conversation just remembered, I forgot to add a paragraph about the fact that Don and Don Lemon and Tucker Arleson both did not sign off. So I just text my editor of that. The column for Renity Fair is about the similarities in the two cases between Carlson and Don Lemon. And, you know, we all know some of them, right?

They were both fired on Monday morning and the news came out within the same hour. It was head spinning. But there's also weird similarities, you know, between two men who could not be more different, between two adversaries of cable news, between, you know, a guy that was born into money, Tara Carlson, and a self-made man, Don Lemon, but that gets to the similarities here.

Both men now are going to have enough money. They never have to work again. They will. They're going to work again. And, you know, so both men are now working through their, in TV. It's like an exit negotiation. You sign an exit deal with certain terms. And that both men are now working with the same entertainment lawyer to reach those deals.

And I think they both basically want the same things. They want their money, yes, and they're going to get their money. I'm pretty confident. But they want their freedom. They want their freedom. They don't want to sit on the bench for three years. You know, sometimes in television news, as some of your listeners know, contracts and money are a form of control. And people will be benched.

They will be, you know, they'll be told, you know, We're not going to put you back on the air. We're not going to publish your pieces anymore, but we're going to pay you for a year or two. And that way you can't go off to a competitor. I think in the case of Lemon and Carlson, we're not going to see those kinds of restrictions, or at least not very broad restrictions, because they both want the freedom to go do whatever they want to do next. You think it's more likely that Carlson works for himself rather than works for another media outlet? What do you think?

I'm going back and forth on that question. within Fox, it seemed to me he was trying to build his own empire. You know, and an empire, I mean, you know, he had shows on the streaming service Fox Nation that very few people watched, but they were there and it was like a production deal almost. He had a studio where he would tape interviews for the website. You know, he was definitely trying. He was in expansion mode.

He was in building mode. But what he was building was like screwing up the rest of the house, right? Like he's like, it's like he's trying to build a new wing of the house. that's going to break the rest of the house at Fox. I don't know if that analogy makes any sense. I just thought about it on the fly, but I think there's something to that. I think not only was he becoming bigger than Fox,

which the Murdox detest, but also he was doing something different than Fox. January 6 is an example of what I mean. So if that's true, it would stand a reason that he's going to go off and he's going to do a truly independent media empire and have podcasts and shows and something like that. But if he does that,

and tell me the thing I'm wrong, it's going to take longer to build. It's going to be harder to build. It's going to take longer. You know, you need infrastructure and all these things. That's why there's a part of me of the things he will go off and build his own truly independent media empire, you know, with podcasts and video shows and stuff like that. The thing about doing that is it takes time and infrastructure.

You know, you can't, you know, yes, you can launch a substack today, but you can't pop up an actual media company tomorrow. It's going to take a little bit of time. So there's a part of me of the things he will want to link up with some other existing rights. wing media system, you know, think about the daily wire. I mean, think about the daily caller, right, which he co-founded and build from there. Megan Kelly and Bill O'Reilly at Fox turned out to be replaceable. Is Tucker Carlson replaceable? Yes, definitely. 100%. Everybody is replaceable in TV. Everybody is replaceable in the media. Anybody who forgets that or thinks they are not replaceable, it moves closer to being replaced. I think it's like one of the truisms of media.

Now, it's really, really hard to replace him. And Fox is not going to better replace 100% of his ratings right away. But I'm of the view that Fox really truly is bigger than any single person, even Carlson. I think we've seen that with Megan Kelly, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, etc. What I think will happen is it's going to take time for Fox to develop a replacement show that is as appealing and as attractive and as, you know, but let's keep in mind. As the ratings have fallen dramatically for Fox's 8 p.m. hour this week, it may be more palatable to advertisers, right? Even at a lower ratings point, they may be able to charge more for ads because Carlson was such a toxic personality and such a turnoff. to many advertisers. So the math would work something like this. If you're getting 30% fewer viewers, but you're getting 40% higher ad rates, right? You're ahead. You're winning. Now, that's not happening

today and that's not going to happen next week. But, you know, there is a version of the arithmetic or the algorithm or whatever where Fox comes out ahead, even if the radians are lower. And that's Fox's preference. If we get a slightly lower number, but we get actual big time advertisers rather than something with an 800 number, call this and get a fabulous deal, that's better for us. I think there is, there's definitely advantages to that. And also advantages to not being in the third Carlson business anymore. And again, if you believe this was like a breakup, maybe a slow motion breakup, maybe something that happened more suddenly,

but an accumulation of multiple slights, grievances and resentments and pissed off people, then, you know, the idea that Carlson was out there, you know, spewing conspiracy theories that were hurting the rest of Fox, which is certainly how the journalist there felt, then cutting him loose, you know, changes Fox in a way that the Murdox will be pleased about. What was so interesting to me was he was doing his show from Maine and Florida largely rather than Fox's headquarters there on 6th Avenue. So he always felt like he was almost doing his own thing geographically as well as content.

And I believe that's a part of the story. And if we're buying into this accumulation thesis and all this things, being isolated. being secluded, being away from the office, I think contributed to his separation here. Like, listen, Carlson hates, hated the Fox News Publications Department. And I think, and I suspect, and I need to do more reporting on this, and I will for my next book. I'll have a lot of criticism of Fox News Media CEO, Suzanne Scott.

So to the extent that you don't like your boss and don't like your colleagues and don't like the people that you work with and are supposed to work with, it's a lot easier not to like them if you don't ever see them in person, right? This is something that some of us learned through COVID, right? I remember, and, you know, I listen, at CNN, I was blessed to work for people

and with people that I learned a lot from. But I remember, it was harder when I didn't see, you know, Jeb Zucker, for example, who was the head of CNN when I was there. You know, during COVID, right? Sometimes, you know, only would email with him, right? Wouldn't see him in the office. You would lose those face-face interactions.

you would lose the way someone speaks as opposed to what they say in email, right? You can read so much more. We've all experienced that, right? And then when you're back in the office or you're back in a in-person setting, you're able to have a stronger relationship. So we've all experienced that. We all went through that during COVID. If you magnify that times a thousand with Tarrelson, who not only isn't out in the office, does not want to be there, detests some of the people there, yada, yada, yada.

I think that, again, gets to the explanation of what has happened. happen to you. All right. I want to ask you about the Fox News Dominion voting systems trial that wasn't. Were you rooting for a big trial with Rupert Murdoch taking the stand so it could be the final chapters of your book? You know, was I rooting for it? I actually wasn't. I actually think this is in a weird way. Listen, I don't think anybody cares about like my writing process, but I think it's better for my writing process because I don't have to wait for the end of the trial now. I can write the book sooner. I can work on it more in May and not in June. Look, the trial was going to be important, I think, for one practical reason.

I know some folks wanted the drama, the spectacle of those folks testifying. I was, you know, vaguely interested in that. I actually was going to go to Wilmington for week two. I didn't go for week one because my daughter had a field trip to go to and I had a trip to take. But I was looking forward to being there, you know, at least on a few key days just to see what it was like. But I think the one practical reason why the trial was going to be so important. And the one practical thing we've lost as a result, are all the redacted files.

All these filings were Fox insisted on redactions. A lot of that would have come out at trial. Dominion had exhibits. They were going to show in opening statements that had not been seen yet. They had emails and text messages that we in the public had not seen yet. Those exhibits likely will never come out. Those quotes, those statements, those embarrassing, and whatever's won't come out. And so from a practical standpoint, as a reporter who wants to see that material, that's disappointing.

But I wouldn't say I was rooting for it. I think it would have been interesting to hear about the jury deliberations and see what 12 randomly selected, you know, the Delawareians. What do we call people from Delaware? I don't know, actually. Yeah, let's go with that. Delaware. I love Delaware, but I don't know what we would call the citizens of Delaware. I would have loved to hear about the deliberations.

And, you know, because so often we talk about the supply and not the demand, right, for lies. Tiger Carlson's a supplier, but there's a demand for what he sells. And I think when you get 12 people together and you can talk about the big lie and the, voter fraud, bullshit and all that. It's really interesting to see where they came down and why they decided what they decided and how much money they proposed if they found Fox guilty. But anyway, I think we're going to still see a lot of legal drama, right? This was settled, but there's so much fallout still.

I don't think Carlson is the last personality who will be leaving Fox in the months ahead. And everyone knows we've got the smartmatic lawsuit still pending. I asked us to fellow Fox watcher David Falkinflake the other day. What did you learn about Fox and Rupert Murdoch from reading all those emails? I learned that Murdoch is older than I appreciated, than I appreciated. Meaning, you know, we know he's 92 years old. But there's a certain passive nature, you know, there's a certain reluctance to get involved, a certain, you know, throwing his hands up or, you know, shrugging off something that can't

he shrugged off. It was so disappointing and it was important to see. So let's go back to November 2020. Brian Curse, you now run Fox News. You now own Fox News. You own one of the most important media outlets in the United States with impacts all around the world. The president, who you have this twisted alliance with, has just lost the election. He has decided he wants to stay in power and he is going to lie to stay in power. And he needs to manipulate tens of millions of people into believing that he won. And you own Fox News and you know the truth and you see what's going on. And you and you're emailing your buddies. You're emailing your employees even. The head of Fox News saying like this is bad and your Trump's this is damaging, this, you know, hurting the country.

Okay. But then you as the owner of Fox News, you don't pick up the phone. You don't send an email to Tucker, to not Tucker actually, not one of the biggest offenders on this. You don't, you don't call Laura Ingram and say, can you please stop winking and nodding about the big lie? You don't, you don't call Maria Bartaromo and say, if you don't stop this, people are going to get hurt. Maria Bartoromo interviews Donald Trump three weeks after Joe Biden wins the election. And Maria sits there and pretends like Donald Trump might be the next president, like might stay in power. Maria Bartaromo sits there and just throws these softballs, like allowing Trump to lie and lie to the audience, it's back and just loves it. Instead of pushing back, she just sat back and just

enjoyed it. And you're Rupert Murdoch, and you don't, you don't call afterwards and say, what the hell did you just do? Sorry, do, do you tell him a little bit passionate about this? I can't. I don't get it. Like, why do you want to own a network if you're not going to like, you know, run the network? So he's not only passive in the face of Trump. He's passive in the face of his own anchors, in this case, on weekend anchors. His own anchors. I always think about that day with Maria and Trump, because I was on an hour later on C. And it was one of like the strangest broadcast I've ever had on CNN where it's like, hello, good morning, everybody.

Thanks for tuning in. We've had to blow out our entire show because there's breaking news. The president is delusional. And Maria Pardo just let it happen. And, you know, for me, it's like, I, you know, I want broadcasters and journalists and reporters to have autonomy and the freedom to report and the freedom to say what is true. I was so lucky at CNN to have so much. much, autonomy. Like, we were owned by AT&T, and yet, like, the head of AT&T and I, the one of the few

times we ever spoke, we joked about how I was so tough on AT&T on one of the stories I did. So it's like, and that's how it's supposed to work. That's how you want it to be. You don't want the head of AT&T calling down and telling you not to say something, not to write something, to delete a story. You know, you can't stand for that. However, what I'm talking about is the way it should work when the news is real, when the story is real, like, you know, when you're doing real reporting. It is entirely different when you have hosts on the air trying to fool people and delude people and giving people false hope, including giving their viewer number one, viewer in chief, the president, false hope about winning in election that he actually

already lost. In that case, the head of the owner should call. The owner should step in. And it's just to me, it is so interesting and baffling and fascinating that he didn't. And so you asked me what I learned about Rupert Murdoch. That's what I learned about Rupert Murdoch. All right, Brian, a couple more quick ones before you go. Also on Monday, Don Lemon was fired from CNN, as you mentioned. What's Don Lemon going to do now? That's an interesting question.

I don't think I have a very clear answer. But my reporting for my Vanity Fair column that plug should be up in Vanity Fair. is that he has multiple options already, that he has multiple, you know, that producers have already been calling, you know, development executive types have already been calling his agent. And as one would expect, you know, in the immediate aftermath of a firing like this, you know, I could see news options or, you know, kind of in the news where I could see options for Lemon, and I can see options in the entertainment space as well. I don't know if everybody remembers this.

I'm probably one of the only people that does. There was this streaming service called CNN Plus that briefly existed last year. And Lemon had a talk show called The Don Lemon Show. And it lasted only an episode or two before the entire service was shut down. But that's the kind of role where I would see Lemon in the future. There are new proprietors at CNN, and at least one shareholder has described wanting to return to this older, less opinionated version of CNN, which is sort of a comment on what CNN was like when Trump was president. how do you think you covered the Trump era?

Myself personally or CNN in general? Either one. Start with yourself. I think the answer is the same, which is we covered Trump truthfully and fully and carefully. And that doesn't mean that was perfect. That doesn't mean it weren't flaws. There's always flaws.

There's always ways it can be better. But I think when I look back at the transcripts, And by the way, I love that CNN transcribes every hour of the air. It's one of the best things about CNN. Fox doesn't do it. I don't know if MSNBC does it. Fox doesn't do it. You can go and you read all the transcripts.

I've actually, I've done this on multiple occasions. I went back and looked at, you know, for example, our coverage, my coverage on reliable sources of Trump during the campaign in 2016. Because I wanted to go and, you know, assess it. And I go, how, how do you know, and I've looked at a lot of the other coverage. Anyway, I think the answer is, you know, was it, was it, was it, was it, intense, yes, was it Trump all the time? Yeah, it oftentimes was. You know, there's a part of me that, you know, I look back at a, remember Hurricane Dorian? Remember Trump's lie about Dorian? He said that

he implied that Alabama might be in danger and Alabama might be hit by the hurricane and that was always crazy and untrue. And, you know, I spent like seven minutes on my show with weather maps, showing how it was untrue. Like, I think we led the hour with it, you know, just like seven minutes of like debunking the president's nonsense about a hurricane forecast that his own government issued. And, you know, you can look back at that and say like, was that, was that the right use of seven minutes?

Was that the right use of time? Was that? And I think that's an interesting conversation now that it's all history. But the answer I usually end up at is he was lying to us and to his fans, to his friends, to his family, to his public, to his people. to the world. He hurt people. And that was a big story. And look, other presidents lie. Other presidents mislead. It's, you know, other politicians do it. It's a big story. And it's an important story. And, you know, it's easy to say now in 2020 that like he wasn't going to win re-election,

yada, yada, yada, but it was a big story. And so I think we met that big story head on. And I look back at it with a lot of pride. All right, Brian Stelter. If he's not making cable news, he's reporting on it. Can't wait for the new book. Thank you for coming on the press box. All right, that's the podcast. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Carlos Jeroboga,

who is sitting in for Erica. Thank you, Carlos. One weekend recommendation before we go. There are a bunch of great stories about Tucker Carlson and Fox out there. I really enjoyed Tina Wend's piece in Puck, which is called Murmurs from the Tucker Bunker. Tina interviewed with Tucker to work at the daily caller way back when.

The story was interesting because it really reflects the point of view of his camp in this whole issue. It has some excellent Kremlinology, which Puck excels in. Check that out. Speaking of networks and turmoil, I've got a new story up at the ringer.com about the ESPN layoffs. The gist of the story is how ESPN became your in-laws. Trust me. It makes sense, I think. Check that out.

And finally, long-time listeners of this podcast will remember that, I was in Santa Fe, New Mexico last year for the Santa Fe International Literary Festival, which is thrown by two friends of mine, Claire Hurtell and Mark Bryan. That's when George R.R. Martin came on this podcast. Well, the festival has a wonderful lineup again this year with authors from John Irving to Gillian Flynn. I'm going to be back on stage doing an interview and hoarding an interview or two for this podcast. If you're in that part of the country, please come say hello. In the meantime, read, relax, revise your nut graphs.

Let's meet back here Monday, shall we, for more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then.