Tucker Carlson’s battle with Fox News could just be starting.
The network canceled his show despite it being the highest-rated show on cable news.
And Fox News issued a remarkable threat to Tucker Carlson with this rumored leak.
Tucker Carlson was abruptly pulled off the air last week.
He got the word while prepping for his Monday show that he would no longer be on the show.
Carlson had consistently been the highest rated show on cable news, but Fox News didn’t seem to care one bit.
And now there are reports that Fox News has an oppo file, i.e. opposition research, on Carlson that it could release if the host disparages the network.
Rolling Stone reported that “Fox News and its communications department — long led by the notoriously aggressive Irena Briganti — has assembled damaging information about Carlson. One source with knowledge calls it an ‘oppo file.’ Two sources add that Fox is prepared to disclose some of its contents if execs suspect that Carlson is coming after the network.”
Fox News threat: did Fox want sources within the company to dish on rumored oppo files?
One wonders if the sources Rolling Stone used had permission from their bosses to dish to the competition off the record as a warning shot across Carlson’s bow.
The oppo file supposedly dovetails with complaints from fired Fox News talent booker Abby Grossberg, who claimed Carlson created a toxic work environment, even though Grossberg admitted that she never met him and didn’t work in his Maine or Florida studios.
A source told Rolling Stone, “Irena will never be shy about using these things.”
A former Fox News host added, “[Briganti] keeps files on everybody to screw with them…It’s classic Fox.”
It’s unlikely that The Blaze CEO and former Fox News host Glenn Beck would speak to Rolling Stone, but he would certainly be familiar with such strongarm tactics.
Independent journalist and lifelong liberal Glenn Greenwaled explained, “Glenn Beck had a bigger audience [than Carlson] at five o’clock…He was breaking insane amounts of records, and at the peak of his popularity, he was off Fox News because he had become so radioactive to establishment prerogatives that no advertiser was willing to touch him, and Fox got rid of him even though he was bringing in many millions of people. So I think there’s a line you can’t cross no matter how large your audience size is, and I think Tucker is flirting with that line. And you saw the kind of attempt to basically start to say that he is too dangerous to allow on air.”
The same thing happened with Beck during his ascension at Fox News.
He was deemed “far right” and “conspiratorial” and “fringe” by the same people that are excoriating Carlson.
Glenn Beck: a case study in Fox News threats and outcomes
Beck explained in a podcast interview, “I had gotten word that somebody was looking into my background, and I had already gone through this with the Left, so I knew it was Fox. And it was after I had really caught on there. And I wouldn’t play the Fox game. And nobody could become bigger than Fox. And they needed you to be dependent on them…I was told somebody’s going through your garbage and this group is investigating you and I knew who had hired them.”
Beck then said that departed Fox News boss Roger Ailes summoned him into his office and told him, “‘You know, there’s a lot of people that would like to see you destroyed.’ I said, ‘I bet.’ And he said, ‘Yeah. Lots of people. People investigating you. I don’t know if you know this…But there’s a lot out there on you.’”
Beck continued, “And he reached down the side of his desk, and he pulled out a stack of files…He almost petted [the stack], almost like it was a cat.…And he said, ‘A lot of stuff is out there about you.’”
Beck, who started in radio, had confessed his long bout with alcoholism and other indiscretions on the air, so he replied, “The great thing is, I don’t have anything to hide because I already said it all.”
Beck recalled in the 2018 documentary Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes, that Ailes responded, “Well, Glenn, it’s always a shame when a man is married to a wonderful woman like your wife.”
Beck was understandably furious and eventually pioneered the digital media news space.
Carlson could be the next former Fox News host to make a big splash elsewhere.
Stay tuned to Unmuzzled News for any updates to this ongoing story.
