Tucker Carlson Decries News Networks Encouraging Vaccines Just After Fox News Debuts Vaccine PSA
Tucker Carlson accused CNN of trying to force vaccines onto the hesitant in a Wednesday night monologue, asking why a news network would be doling out health advice to its viewers.
The source of Carlson’s segment was an internal email sent from CNN’s Washington bureau chief to another employee, with the subject line “A majority of unvaccinated Americans say they are unlikely to take the covid vaccine.”
In the email itself, the bureau chief wrote: “This is the point re: carrot vs. stick. The carrot is no longer going to work…”
That email was mistakenly sent to conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who provided it to Carlson, who took it as proof CNN is planning on flogging its vaccine-hesitant viewers with a big stick.
“As a channel, CNN shouldn’t have a position on whether you should take medicine or not, because it’s a news channel,” Carlson said. “It’s not a health agency.”
“Why is a news channel doing this? Any news channel. A lot of them are,” Carlson added.
Oddly enough, there is a network that is far more guilty of what Carlson is outraged about: Fox News. A vague private email from a CNN staffer is one thing. But Fox, just two hours before Carlson’s Wednesday night show, debuted a PSA encouraging its viewers to get vaccinated.
The ten second spot, in which hosts Steve Doocy and Harris Faulkner encourage viewers to get vaccinated, first aired on Special Report. The ad is reportedly going to run in prime time.
Fox News has received its fair share of blowback for its — often factually wrong — coverage undermining the vaccines. That criticism is merited. Coverage of the vaccines should be accurate and responsible, a fairly low bar that Fox News (Carlson in particular) has consistently failed to meet.
A trickier question is the one posed by Carlson on Wednesday night: to what extent should news networks be advocates for the Covid vaccine? The vaccines, authorized by the FDA for emergency use, have been deemed safe and found effective against Covid. That should be made clear. But a news network take the official position of advocating viewers to take them?
Carlson does make a distinction between a news network’s official stance and its voices advocating their opinions. That gives Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy, who has told Fox viewers to get the vaccine, a pass from Carlson. But it does not spare the Fox News PSA.
And after Carlson railed against CNN, he brought on Charlie Kirk, who criticized a “coordinated effort from people on the establishment center-right” to encourage vaccines, which he derided as “virtue signaling.”
Funnily enough, the PSA from Fox is a clear effort by the network to combat the claim from critics that its programming is killing Americans by fueling vaccine hesitancy. But Fox’s efforts to vaccine-signal are sort of pointless when its top rated hosts smack those efforts down in prime time. At the end of the day, the only thing the network ends up encouraging is confusion.
