Tucker Carlson Calls Journalists ‘Animals.’ He’s Also Their Best Source.

“I’ve known Tucker Carlson for 20 years,” Mr. Hagan wrote in an introduction to the interview, calling the Fox host “one of the most intelligent and reliably savage observers of Washington — even more so off camera.” He also hinted at the substance of Mr. Carlson’s less guarded observations: “A canny TV diplomat, he won’t say Trump is terrified, weak, politically doomed, in deep denial and surrounded by toadies and mediocrities.”

Mr. Carlson’s other defense against bad publicity, of course, is his willingness to use his platform as a weapon, and to attack individual reporters, setting off waves of harassment. When a freelance writer and photographer for The Times began working on an article about his studio in rural Maine last year, Mr. Carlson pre-emptively attacked the two by name on the air and characterized one as a political activist, which Erik Wemple of The Washington Post called a “stunning fabrication.” The planned article, a light feature that was nowhere close to publication, became impossible to report, after threats and a menacing incident at the photographer’s house, according to The Times’s media editor, Jim Windolf.

In a separate incident last February, a Politico reporter, Ben Schreckinger, made inquiries about advertisements on Fox for a brand of laxative marketed by Purdue Pharma, the company that paid billions in criminal and civil settlements for its role in the opioid epidemic. (Mr. Carlson has skewered the company and other drug makers for what he calls a “tsunami” of opioid deaths and has criticized politicians who take its money.) Before any story could be published, Mr. Carlson went on the offensive, airing a segment attacking Politico’s partnership with a Hong Kong newspaper, and he demanded that Mr. Schreckinger answer for it. “How does Ben Schreckinger feel about working for a publication that makes money from Chinese state propaganda and political repression?” Mr. Carlson asked.

The Purdue story, such as it was, never appeared. Politico’s editor in chief, Matthew Kaminski, said, “We’ve never run or not run a story based on anything Tucker has said about us.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/20/business/media/tucker-carlson.html