Tucker Carlson, the highest-ranked cable news anchor, told Axios he hadn’t read a word in the New York Times series about him this weekend – “and, of course, he won’t.”
Why it matters: Despite Carlson’s claim that he won’t read the opus, his team believes that the Times’ check will only make his furious fans more furiously loyal.
- Carlson’s official Twitter account posted a photo of him holding the newspaper, his face splashing over the crease – and laughing. The tweet is wordless.
Details: The New York Times this weekend published 20,000 words about “Mr. Carlson,” as the newspaper calls him, divided into four parts online and two days in the newspaper.
- Times readers were obsessed with the stories: all four were at or near the top of the website’s Trend rankings.
Part 1 of Nick Confessor’s “American Nationalist” spans seven pages in a Sunday newspaper. The “key conclusions” of the series alone contain 1,500 words.
- “Mr Carlson’s technique on the air – happily courting the backlash and then making himself his partner to the victim’s victims – helped him position himself, like everyone else, to inherit the populist movement that grew up around Mr Trump. Confessore writes, calling it “Trumpism without Trump.”
The Times says an analysis of 1,150 episodes of the Fox News show, which airs this week at 8 p.m. its rise is intertwined with the transformations of its network and American conservatism. “
- His story: “They” want to control, then destroy “you”.
- Carlson referred to the “ruling class” in more than 800 broadcasts, saying “they” want you to “keep quiet and obey.”
Between the lines: “Here’s the Tucker Carlson Tonight book: Go straight to the third rail, be it a race, immigration, or other hotkey problem; collecting the inevitable reaction; give back to the critics the next night on a skewer about how they reacted. Then do it all over again. “
- “This feedback boosted ratings and increased loyalty to Fox and Mr. Carlson.”
“According to three former Fox employees, Mr Carlson was one of the most avid users on the network of what is known as minute-by-minute data – real-time ebb and flow estimates of the audience,” said Confessore.
- “Network executives soon began to apply the approach to daily newscasts. They introduced it as ‘Moneyball’ for television.”
Carlson, who was not interviewed by The Times, told Axios: “I’ve never read the ratings one day in my life. I don’t even know how. Ask someone at Fox.”
- “Most of the great positions I have taken in the last five years – against the neocons, the wax and the war [in Ukraine] – in the beginning they were very unpopular with our audience. “
Part 1 is free with this link … 🧵 Confessore theme for his series.
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