Commentary
Carlson, Lemon Out: Holding Your Anchors Accountable On And Off The Air
- by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, April 27, 2023
TV news anchors may have a lot to answer for -- whether in front of the camera or not.
On the same day that Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson was shown the door, CNN said goodbye to its popular prime-time host Don Lemon.
The departure of Lemon was attributed to “misconduct issues” at CNN. Fox News Channel did not offer specific details about Carlson's dismissal -- saying only that “Fox News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways.”
A number of reports said it was partly the result of the Dominion Voting Systems depositions and releases of Carlson's admissions off-air via texts and emails -- that he knew that manipulation of voting systems in the 2020 Presidential election was entirely false.
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In Fox's release about Carlson, the sentence following the statement “agreed to part ways” said “we thank him for his service.”
Service. As if someone enlisted for the job -- or perhaps was drafted for service. It's an interesting choice of words for someone who had been Fox News Channel's leading personality in terms of viewership and national TV advertising sales.
Fox is not immune from its own "misconduct" issues linked to its hosts and executives in the past. Bill O’Reilly left in 2016, and Fox News Channel chairman and chief executive officer Roger Ailes was pushed out for the same reasons two years later.
Even straight-up news stories on broadcast networks can become an issue. In 2013, NBC's Brian Williams said on David Letterman's late-night show about an assignment in Iraq that "two of our four helicopters were hit by ground-fire, including the one I was in, RPG and AK-47." That never happened.
All this could be good news for any TV news channels that are holding their on-air journalists and hosts always accountable. But really -- how long does it last before the next mishap occurs? Is that just the spillage we get from wanting live, or near-real time live TV content?
So what have we learned here? After Carlson's ouster, Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy issued a statement that said: “For a while Fox News has been moving to become establishment media and Tucker Carlson’s removal is a big milestone in that effort.. Millions of viewers who liked the old Fox News [emphasis added] have made the switch to Newsmax and Tucker’s departure will only fuel that trend.”
Ah, the “old Fox News.” Hmm..
What is that exactly? And taking it further, what is the old CNN? Or the old NBC News, or the old ABC News?
A seemingly respectable TV news anchor has to do the right thing on and off the air.
And when mistakes occur, ownership of those errors in judgment and actions must be addressed quickly. But lessons learned may not always stick too well for the next person.
Wayne Friedman is West Coast Editor of MediaPost. You can reach Wayne at wayne@mediapost.com.
It would be great if MP stopped conflating "news anchors" with pundits. Two totally different things. Neither Lemon nor Carlson are news anchors. Both are (were) pundits.
Let's stop conflating journalists with pundits as well.
Hopefully the networks start to focus more on real news and unbias reporting, instead of opinionated, repetitive fluff, but I'm not holding my breath.
Dan, I agree with you about the difference between "news anchors" and "pundits" which we have in abundance. But is "pundit" the right description for Tucker, Lemon, Hannity, etc. Usually a"pundit" is defined as an "expert" on the subject in question, which by implication, suggests that he or she really knows what they are talking about. I find that most of the "TV news" "types who are classified as "pundits" on both sides of the political spectrum are not that well informed or are simply propagandists for a certain point of view. Maybe they shouldbe called "influencers" or "opinionators"?
I agree with both comments and understand the article (with some disagreement) from Wayne Friedman. One thing I see with most of today's commentators, or news anchors they call their newscasts "shows", even local news. So, what does that tell you, it's a different platform for news stories for the day. So, are you an anchor or commentator? We remember a few years back a "super" was posted during the show explaining "commentary." Maybe the networks need to clarify what people are watching during a telecast. I guess we will never see the pure news ever reported again, just points of the writer's or commentator's bias.
I always called them opinion & commentary hosts, not journalists or anchors someone blocked me on Joy Reid when they claimed that Joy was a journalist on Twitter when all I said was she is an opinion & commentary host did get about 7 likes and a few RT's as well they couldn't handle the truth and were soft. I almost went hard on what I really thought of Joy Reid in the tweet but decided to be nice and not mean.