Just How Bad Was the Work Environment on Tucker Carlson’s Show? Here Are All The Allegations

As the media world continues to reel from the firing of two of cable news’s most headline-grabbing personalities, Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon, many reporters and observers are left to question, why?

While the termination of Lemon appears to be pretty clear cut – that after a string of controversial missteps, he continued to cause headaches at CNN – Carlson’s sudden termination is more of an open question.

Carlson remained the top opinion host at Fox News, despite courting controversy, and appeared invincible, even in the aftermath of the network’s $787.5 million defamation settlement.

On Monday, insider sources told LA Times reporter Stephen Battaglio that Carlson’s ouster was tied to the ongoing discrimination lawsuit filed by fired producer Abby Grossberg in March. While speculation regarding Carlson’s ouster focused largely around Grossberg’s suit, additional information and reporting from Mediaite’s Colby Hall made clear that Grossberg — who never worked closely with Carlson — was likely only part of the story.

NPR’s veteran media correspondent David Folkenflik added key additional reporting, noting, “I have spoken with three people with knowledge of Fox’s ouster of Tucker Carlson. They say Carlson’s digital exchanges captured by the Dominion legal team echo the suite of concerns alleged by his ex-producer – that his show’s workplace was defined by sexism and bigotry.”

Grossberg’s 79-page lawsuit, which Folkenflik references, alleges she was the victim of abusive sexism and misogyny. Fox News fired Grossberg and denied her legal allegations as “riddled with false allegations against Fox and our employees.”

“Grossberg’s lawsuit alleges discrimination based on gender, religion, and disability. She alleges that ‘constant bullying and gaslighting’ caused her ‘so much stress and anxiety that her stomach ulcers flared up and she was in excruciating pain,’” reported the LA Times in March.

Grossberg was a producer on Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo until last year when she was moved to be a booker on Tucker Carlson Tonight, where she worked until her recent termination. Grossberg worked on Bartiromo’s show during the time in which Bartiromo helped to promote false allegations that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Grossberg’s suit claims that Carlson’s show promoted an environment that “subjugates women.”

Grossberg also made headlines when she claimed that she was coached by Fox News’s lawyers to give inaccurate or misleading answers in the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against the network. Grossberg later amended her lawsuit against Fox and added an allegation that Fox’s lawyers deleted text messages from her phone.

“The lawsuit says Grossberg gave her phone to Fox lawyers in 2022, and ‘that certain messages between Ms. Grossberg and Ms. Bartiromo were missing/appeared to have been deleted’ when she got the device back from Fox’s team,” CNN reported in mid-April. Grossberg also added Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott as a defendant in her suit.

Fox has denied Grossberg’s claims and insisted she was fired for releasing work-related tapes to the media, tapes which one report says fueled a last-minute settlement in the Dominion case.

Grossberg’s suit also alleged that male producers on Carlson’s show used obscene language to describe women and regularly made anti-Semitic jokes. After Carlson’s ouster, we learned that his executive producer Justin Wells was also fired.

Grossberg’s allegations include wild stories of Carlson’s staff making crude jokes about women, including a “mock debate about whether they would prefer to have sex with Ms. [Tudor] Dixon or her Democratic opponent, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.”

“According to the lawsuits filed by Ms. Grossberg, Fox superiors called Ms. Bartiromo a “crazy bitch” who was “menopausal” and asked Ms. Grossberg to cut the host out of coverage discussions,” reported the New York Times, which added Wells once called Grossberg into a meeting “to ask whether Ms. Bartiromo was having a sexual relationship with the House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy.”

Grossberg spoke to the Times about her lawsuit and added that “she and other women endured frank and open sexism from co-workers and superiors at the network, which has been dogged for years by lawsuits and allegations about sexual harassment by Fox executives and stars.”

Battaglio reported on Monday that the decision to fire Carlson came directly from “Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch with input from board members and other Fox Corp. executives.” Other observers in the media have speculated Carlson may have burned bridges by harshly criticizing Fox News executives in his Dominion deposition, which remains largely redacted.

Former CNN media reporter Brian Stelter noted that Dominion’s lawyers gained access to hundreds of emails, text messages, and other documents from inside Fox News that remain redacted and shielded from the public eye. Stelter theorized that one possible reason for Carlson’s firing may stem from those messages, which were seen by Fox’s top executives. “So what was Carlson saying about, say, Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott? What was he texting about the Murdochs? We don’t know. We may never know. But this theory may explain why Carlson’s top producer and textmate, Justin Wells, was also terminated.”

Notably, Carlson’s predilection for using vulgar language — he was revealed to have called Sidney Powell a “cunt” in a text message — may have led to his undoing as his bosses saw his unpolished and private thoughts. However, Carlson has long been known to speak poorly about his bosses and the Dominion discovery would have come out many months ago – which begs the question of why would Fox fire him now.

Furthermore, as Mediaite editor-in-chief Aidan McLaughlin reported in late March, Fox News sources claimed that executives at the network had lost control of Carlson — even while facing multiple billion-dollar lawsuits stemming from reckless coverage. “No one has control over Tucker, I don’t even know if the Murdochs do,” an ex-Fox veteran told McLaughlin at the time.

So, while the full picture as to exactly why Carlson was fired remains elusive it’s hard to imagine the Grossberg allegations did not play a part. We will find out in the coming days and weeks how much other dynamics played a role in the firing of cable news’s most-popular host.