Ben Smith Outs Media-Basher Tucker Carlson as a Top Source For Reporters
New York Times media columnist Ben Smith posted an article about “one of Washington’s open secrets,” that Fox News’ top-rated host, Tucker Carlson, frequently gossips with the same liberal media outlets he denounces nightly on his show, on topics ranging from former President Donald Trump to Fox News’ “tumultuous internal politics.”
“Tucker Carlson Calls Journalists ‘Animals.’ He’s Also Their Best Source,” was Smith’s headline, detailing how multiple journalists described the juicy info Carlson fed them over the years:
He’s the go-to guy for sometimes-unflattering stories about Donald J. Trump and for coverage of the internal politics of Fox News (not to mention stories about Mr. Carlson himself). I won’t talk here about any off-the-record conversations I may have had with him. But 16 other journalists (none from The Times; it would put my colleagues in a weird position if I asked them) told me on background that he has been, as three of them put it, “a great source.”
Among the anecdotes Smith shared was one about an excerpt from a new book by Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender, in which he describes Carlson sending Trump’s calls to voice mail after his first debate with Biden — the one where Trump frequently interrupted his opponent — and then finally picked up. Bender’s book retells the conversation with direct quotes, but, as Smith noted, the author “declined to comment on the sourcing that allowed him to so precisely reconstruct a conversation only two people were privy to.”
Carlson’s public commentary has grown increasingly conservative over the years, and he’s been criticized recently for promoting conspiracy theories about the pandemic and that the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was a false flag operation by the FBI.
But Carlson has also had longstanding relationships with many movers and shakers in the political media world, and this has “served as a kind of insurance policy,” Smith wrote, “protecting him from the marginalization that ended the Fox career of his predecessor, Glenn Beck, who also drew a huge audience with shadowy theories of elite conspiracy.”
