New allegations tonight that
there are recordings
and a lot of them
that should have been provided
in the Dominion Voting Systems
case against Fox.
That's what
Abby Grosberg
fired, Fox
senior producer
who once worked with Tucker
Carlson, who was fired
yesterday, is saying is saying a reminder
that Grossberg has filed
two lawsuits against Fox and says she was
let go for it.
She accuses
Fox of promoting
a hostile work environment
with claims of rampant
sexism and misogyny
among Carlson's show team.
According to our reporting,
that may have been one of the reasons
why Carlson was fired yesterday.
Grossberg also claims
she was pressured
to give misleading comments
in the Dominion case.
Today, she told MSNBC
Nicolle Wallace
she has many audio
recordings from her devices,
and she claims
Dominion said that they didn't have them
I have several
recordings that I'm still going through
that we've recovered
from all of the phones.
There are 90 that we have
90 recordings
not long after that, her attorney
speaking on MSNBC said the Jack Smith,
the special counsel
on the January six investigation,
wants those recordings.
A Fox spokesperson
has previously said
The Goldbergs lawsuits are, quote,
riddled with false allegations
against the network and her employees.
I want to get perspective on this
and what it means for a broader news
media landscape without Tucker Carlson
and from media critic David Zurawik.
David, good to have you on.
Do you have a sense
of how much of a role of any Abby
Goldberg's allegations
may have played in Tucker
Carlson's ouster?
I mean, is it clear really why
he was fired at this point?
It isn't.
It isn't clear why he was fired.
And I think really
this story has such large cultural
reverberations for it
that we should be careful
and that we shouldn't say
this is why it happened.
There's been so much of that
Anderson, in the last couple of days.
And purposely in the piece
I wrote for CNN, I pulled back from that.
But if you look at history,
there is some indication here
that this culture is still in place.
The culture of sexism,
misogyny, really a culture
that debases women
was built into the DNA of Fox News
by Roger Ailes,
the the founder,
you know,
the master propagandist,
the political operative who founded this.
We saw it down the line in Bill O'Reilly.
Fox talked about as if they excised
this cancer when they got rid of Ailes
and O'Reilly. Bill O'Reilly, the host.
And that was really dramatic.
But even cutting off the head with Ailes
and then O'Reilly,
you don't change a culture overnight.
I wrote at the time that
this is like
a cancer
at the heart of Fox News internally
and they really have to make a series
systematic attempt to eradicate it.
I don't think
that they made that kind of attempt.
If her allegations are true, Anderson,
they didn't do much about it at all.
You covered
I mean, Tucker Carlson for many years.
Is it clear to you how or even
why this his persona became what it did?
I mean, was
he always in this for the money?
And he was just reading the tea
leaves of where the
you know,
and following the money to
to where he thought the audience was.
And it was
very financially lucrative for him
because I talked to Paul Begala
last night
to work with Carlson
on CROSSFIRE here on CNN.
And Paul basically said that back then,
you know,
Carlson was very contrarian,
didn't like to be managed,
but the Fox version of him
was not the person he knew way back then.
Well, you know, I think it's always hard
to figure out whether someone
is manipulating the system
or being seduced and manipulated by it.
I think that that wasn't always the way
Carlson was.
I would agree with Begala about that.
But I think it was the man
meeting the moment
when he got that show at Fox.
We had the ascent of Donald Trump.
And I think he saw what Trump did,
how Trump used transgressive behavior
to an outrage
to gather attention
to himself, to control the media.
I mean,
you know,
I wrestled in a million columns with
how do we cover this guy?
You know,
we can't keep covering him
when he says things
we know that aren't true.
All we can do is say it's not true.
But we never figured out
exactly how to cover him.
And just as Trump
did in the political realm,
by going
where no one else would go, saying
horrible things,
insulting people in horrible
ways, saying racist stuff.
Tucker Carlson did the same thing
in the media realm, like when he said
that immigrants
he suggested that immigrants
make us dirtier as a nation.
That's a racist statement.
That's just outrageous.
I can't think of any mainstream
journalist
who would even want to think that,
let alone say.
But he said it.
He gets enormous coverage.
His ratings
he he feeds the base of his far
right further
and further out their audience.
And it looks like he owns,
quote, owns the libs.
And so they're delighted
the level of hypocrisy, though, of him,
you know, saying he,
you know, things he hates Donald Trump.
He can't wait
until he doesn't have to cover him.
They're almost there.
They don't have to have him on, you know,
they don't have to talk about him
every night.
I mean,
it's just so hypocritical
to be saying one thing privately and
saying something else on air.
I mean, it just it's stunning.
And there's Anderson, to you and me
and intellectually,
people
who try to be intellectually consistent
and honest The hypocrisy makes you gag.
But I think in the world
he operated in somehow in his mind.
And I
you know, I don't again, I don't know.
But I think, you know, it's easy
to get seduced by the power.
You know,
every time you go out there
and say certain things,
you get great feedback, you know?
And I think he got caught up in that
a little bit.
I think in some ways
he got caught up in it
and hoisted on his own.
There's nothing
there's no greater reminder
of how perilous one it is
than being quickly fired and
zipping off the screen
and then suddenly seeing how different
the world is. David Zurawik.
Appreciate it. Thank you.