House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has 41,000 hours of Capitol surveillance footage from the Jan. 6 insurrection that he wants to turn over to a journalist.
Who is the journalist that McCarthy is entrusting with this footage from one of the country’s most consequential, disturbing and divisive days since the Civil War?
Tucker Carlson.
Axios’ Mike Allen, who broke the story about McCarthy turning over this massive trove of footage, points out that “Carlson has repeatedly questioned official accounts of 1/6, downplaying the insurrection as ‘vandalism.’” Carlson also said on his show last year that what happened on Jan. 6 was an “outbreak of mob violence, a forgettably minor outbreak by recent standards” and that it was “not even close to an insurrection.”
That’s the guy who is now in charge of combing through all that video and explaining it. No doubt, he will spend the upcoming weeks playing carefully chosen clips on his various platforms, including his prime-time Fox News show, and putting his spin on it all. Will he suggest that we can’t believe what our eyes and ears told us about that day?
Carlson told Allen, “(T)here was never any legitimate reason for this footage to remain secret. If there was ever a question that’s in the public’s interest to know, it’s what actually happened on Jan. 6. By definition, this video will reveal it. It’s impossible for me to understand why any honest person would be bothered by that.”
Here’s the issue. Let us not forget what Jan. 6 was all about. Donald Trump supporters — riled up by Trump himself — stormed the Capitol to protest a fairly held election. Upset and unable to accept that their guy lost the 2020 presidential election, Trump supporters — again, inflamed by Trump — tried to stop the certification of Joe Biden as president.
And now we find out what was really going on at Fox News during those tumultuous times.
Top executives at Fox News, as well as many of its most influential hosts, apparently doubted Trump’s claims that the election was stolen, but worried that telling that to Fox’s audience could damage the network’s business model. At one point, chairman Rupert Murdoch messaged Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, “Everything at stake here.”
The messages, included in a legal filing as part of Dominion Voting System’s $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox News and made public last week, showed what some of the top stars and executives were thinking.
Murdoch called Trump’s claims “really crazy stuff.” Carlson said he caught Trump lawyer Sidney Powell “lying.”
Prime-time host Laura Ingraham wrote, “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.” (Ingraham was talking, one would assume, about Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani.)
The New York Times’ Jeremy W. Peters and Katie Robertson wrote, “Dominion’s brief depicts Ms. Scott, whom colleagues have described as sharply attuned to the sensibilities of the Fox audience, as being well aware that Mr. Trump’s claims were baseless. And when another Murdoch-owned property, The New York Post, published an editorial urging Mr. Trump to stop complaining that he had been cheated, Ms. Scott distributed it widely among her staff. Mr. Murdoch then thanked her for doing so, the brief says.”
Fox put out a statement that said, “There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan. Dominion has mischaracterized the record, cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context, and spilled considerable ink on facts that are irrelevant under black-letter principles of defamation law.”
“But,” CNN’s Oliver Darcy wrote, “the court document provided a mountain of evidence exposing Fox News as a right-wing talk channel void of the most basic journalistic ethics. The legal filing also underscored how worried Fox News executives and hosts were in the immediate aftermath of the election of losing its viewership to Newsmax, a smaller right-wing talk channel that was saturating its airwaves with election denialism.”
For example, Carlson texted his producer, “Do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience? … An alternative like Newsmax could be devastating to us.”
When Fox News reporter Jacqui Heinrich fact-checked Trump’s claims about Dominion on Twitter right after the election, Carlson texted Sean Hannity, “Please get her fired. Seriously … what the (expletive)? I’m actually shocked. … It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.”
Heinrich deleted her tweet.
Ron Mitchell, the network executive in charge of prime-time programming and analytics, wrote that Newsmax’s brand of “conspiratorial reporting might be exactly what the disgruntled (Fox News) viewer is looking for.”
There was much more in the filing, but you get the drift.
New York Times opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote, “It’s certainly true that all cable news shows program with ratings in mind. MSNBC — where, full disclosure, I’m a contributor — pays much closer attention to various Trump scandals than to climate change or the war in Ukraine because it’s catering to its audience. But there is no analogue for the way Fox treats its viewers. In addition to MSNBC, in the past I’ve appeared a number of times on CNN. Sometimes hosts are a little saltier when the cameras aren’t rolling, but I don’t recall ever hearing any daylight between the views they express on-air and off. Fox News is unique in its bad faith.”
There’s more …
Former Trump attorney Sidney Powell, shown here in November 2020. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
NPR’s David Folkenflik wrote Monday, “The ‘wackadoodle’ foundation of Fox News’ election-fraud claims.”
The lead of the story: “A woman who says the wind talks to her and put forth claims of election fraud in the 2020 presidential race that she admitted were ‘pretty wackadoodle’ turns out to be a key source of allegations that Fox News presented, night after night, to millions of viewers late that fall.”
Folkenflik is talking about a source for Sidney Powell. This person sent a memo called “Election Fraud Info,” which Powell forwarded to Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo. Powell then appeared on Bartiromo’s show the following day.
The existence of the memo also came up in the legal brief filed by Dominion Voting Systems that became public last week.
Folkenflik wrote, “The author of the memo in which Powell and Bartiromo put so much stock offered detailed and utterly false claims of how Dominion Voting Systems helped rig the election for Biden. She also shared a bit about herself, writing that she gains insights from experiencing something ‘like time-travel in a semi-conscious state.’”
Folkenflik added, “Powell’s source also volunteered that the wind tells her that she’s a ghost, though she doesn’t believe it. The woman, who is not named in the legal brief, wrote that she knew the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia had been killed during a week-long human hunting expedition at an elite social club. (Scalia, a favorite of many Fox News hosts, died in 2016 of a heart attack, according to local officials in Texas, where he died.)”
The woman wrote in the email that Powell shared with Bartiromo and then-Fox Business Network host Lou Dobbs, “Who am I? And how do I know all of this? … I’ve had the strangest dreams since I was a little girl. I was internally decapitated, and yet, I live.”
This appears to be the same memo that made unproven claims that Dominion software flipped votes for Donald Trump to Joe Biden.
When she was deposed for the Dominion lawsuit, Bartiromo agreed with one of the Dominion lawyers that the email was “nonsense.” But Folkenflik wrote that’s “not how Bartiromo responded at the time” following the election.
Bartiromo shared the information with Trump’s son, Eric, and had Powell on her Nov. 8, 2020 “Sunday Morning Futures” show to talk about “voting irregularities.” Powell responded by talking about votes being flipped, saying, “That is where the fraud took place, where they were flipping votes in the computer system or adding votes that did not exist. There has been a massive and coordinated effort to steal this election from ‘We the people’ of the United States of America.”
By the way, Carlson texted a colleague saying the software claim was “absurd.”
Fox Business Network senior vice president Gary Schreier was concerned enough that he wrote the network’s president, Lauren Petterson, to say that Bartiromo “has GOP conspiracy theorists in her ear and they use her for their message sometimes.”
But Powell continued to appear on Fox, although Carlson pushed back and said on the air on Nov. 19, 2020, “We took her seriously. She never sent us any evidence, despite a lot of requests, polite requests. Not a page. When we kept pressing, she got angry and told us to stop contacting her.”
“Even so,” Folkenflik wrote, “Carlson privately echoed Fox News executives angered by their news-side colleagues who publicly noted the false claims made by Powell and others publicly, including on Fox shows. They argued it fed the outrage of Trump fans toward the network.”
One final thought …
Back to this idea of McCarthy giving Carlson all the tapes of Jan. 6, Maryland Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin asked a completely fair question on Twitter:
McCarthy giving 40,000 hrs of Jan. 6 tape to a pro-Putin journalist is an astounding ethical collapse. What security precautions were taken to keep this from becoming a roadmap for 2024 insurrection? Why isn’t it available to all media & public? Smell the MAGA propaganda coming.
Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the ranking member on the Homeland Security Committee and former chair of the Jan. 6 committee, said in a statement, “It’s hard to overstate the potential security risks if this material were to be used irresponsibly.” He also said, “If Speaker McCarthy has indeed granted Tucker Carlson — a Fox host who routinely spreads misinformation and (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s poisonous propaganda — and his producers access to this sensitive footage, he owes the American people an explanation of why he has done so and what steps he has taken to address the significant security concerns at stake.”
A surprise visit
President Joe Biden, left, walks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Monday. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
President Joe Biden made a surprise visit to Ukraine on Monday, meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for several hours and saying, “One year later, Kyiv stands. And Ukraine stands. Democracy stands. The Americans stand with you, and the world stands with you.”
Associated Press chief White House correspondent Zeke Miller detailed how Biden snuck out of Washington and ended up in Ukraine. Biden left the White House around 3:30 a.m. on Sunday and wasn’t seen again until 20 hours later (on Monday) in Ukraine. Biden was already set to travel to Warsaw this week to meet with NATO leaders. He first made a stop in Ukraine, arriving not by Air Force One, but by an Air Force jet.
Miller wrote, “Over the next five hours, the president made multiple stops around town — ferried about in a black SUV rather than the presidential limousine — without any announcement to the Ukrainian public that he was there. But all that activity attracted enough attention that word of his presence leaked out well before he could get back to Poland, which was the original plan. Aides at the White House were surprised the secret held as long as it did.”
Miller added, “Only two journalists were on board instead of the usual complement of 13. Their electronic devices were powered off and turned over to the White House for the duration of the trip into Ukraine. A small number of journalists based in Ukraine were summoned to a downtown hotel on Monday morning to join them, not informed that Biden was visiting until shortly before his arrival.”
Lemon benched
Don Lemon did not appear on Monday’s “CNN This Morning.” Co-host Poppy Harlow said on air, “Don has the day off.”
Last Thursday, on air, Lemon said that GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley, who is 51, was not “in her prime.” He added a woman is considered in her prime when she is “in her 20s, 30s and maybe her 40s.”
What an incredibly insulting and boneheaded thing to say.
According to The New York Times’ Michael M. Grynbaum and John Koblin, CNN chairman Chris Licht opened last Friday morning’s editorial call with staff by saying he was “disappointed” by Lemon’s remarks and added that they were “upsetting, unacceptable and unfair to his co-hosts, and ultimately a huge distraction to the great work of this organization.”
Lemon said on the call, “I am sorry. I did not mean to hurt anyone. I did not mean to offend anyone.”
Lemon did not appear on Friday’s “CNN This Morning,” but reports are that it was already scheduled to be an off day for Lemon.
Late Monday night, Licht sent out a memo to staff that said Lemon will return to the air on Wednesday. Licht added in the memo that he and Lemon had a “frank and meaningful conversation” and that Lemon has “agreed to participate in formal training, as well as continuing to listen and learn.”
Licht added, “We take this situation very seriously.”
The Daily Beast’s Lachlan Cartwright reports that Lemon’s “future on the show continues to be discussed at the highest levels within the network, according to two people familiar with the matter.”
A source told Cartwright, “There are ongoing conversations about Don’s future. He is a constant distraction.”
George Polk Awards
Among the winners of the 2022 George Polk Awards, which were announced Monday, were three recipients for coverage of the war in Ukraine. The Polk Awards were established in 1949 by Long Island University to commemorate George Polk, a CBS correspondent murdered in 1948 while covering the Greek civil war. The awards “place a premium on investigative and enterprising reporting that gains attention and achieves results.”
The award for foreign reporting went to the staff of The New York Times for its Ukraine coverage.
Videojournalist Mstyslav Chernov, photographer Evgeniy Maloletka, video producer Vasilisa Stepanenko and reporter Lori Hinnant of The Associated Press won for war reporting for coverage of the siege of Mariupol.
Lynsey Addario of The New York Times won the photojournalism award for haunting photos of a woman and her two children alongside a friend who lay dying moments after a mortar attack in Ukraine.
You can see the entire list of winners here, but some of the other notable award recipients included:
- The national reporting award went to Josh Gerstein, Alex Ward, Peter Canellos and the staff of Politico for their big scoop of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade.
- John Archibald, Ashley Remkus and Ramsey Archibald of the website AL.com won the local reporting award for “revealing how the police force in Brookside, Alabama (pop. 1,253) used proceeds from fines for nefarious citations and arrests and forfeitures to bilk poor residents of thousands of dollars, increasing revenue by 640% over two years. The police chief, his top lieutenant and more than half of the force resigned or were forced out within two weeks of AL.com’s initial story.”
- Political reporting went Sarah Blaskey, Nicholas Nehamas, Ana Ceballos, Mary Ellen Klas and the staff of the Miami Herald for “exposing the cruel calculus behind two flights taking 49 misled South American refugees from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard at the behest of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. The stories traced the operation to recruiters who lured them and other migrants with false promises of work in a political stunt the Herald calculated cost Florida taxpayers $1.565 million.”
A legend is retiring
My Poynter colleague Al Tompkins is retiring after 50 years in the business — 25 working in local broadcast newsrooms of Kentucky and Tennessee and another teaching at Poynter.
His last day will be March 31, although he says he will do some occasional teaching.
But Poynter’s Kelly McBride wrote that she’s skeptical that this is it, that he really is retiring. She wrote, “That’s because I’ve been Tompkins’ colleague for 20 years and his boss for 10. He works longer and harder, travels to more cities and continents, than journalists half his age. The man is a reporter’s reporter, driven by his undying love for both the craft and power of broadcast storytelling.”
McBride has much more on Tompkins’ career in her story, and I’ll be writing more about Tompkins in the weeks ahead before he steps away.
In a note to staff, Poynter president Neil Brown said, “Al Tompkins has been synonymous with Poynter, and, more importantly, synonymous with journalistic excellence, quality teaching, ethics and passionate support of working journalists. … When Al teaches a program his enthusiasm, honesty, directness and empathy fill the room and lift the participants. Those characteristics make his sessions incredibly effective, but the underpinning is his deep street cred as a first-rate journalist.”
Media tidbits
- PolitiFact’s Maria Ramirez Uribe with “Tucker Carlson is wrong: Diversity makes the Biden administration more representative, not less.”
- The Daily Beast’s Justin Baragona with “Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Staffers Rope C-SPAN Into Their Revolt Against Owner.”
- The New York Times’ Norimitsu Onishi with “After Going Gray, a News Anchor Found Herself the Focus of the Story.”
Hot type
- The Detroit News’ Anna Liz Nichols reports from Michigan State following the recent mass shooting with “As Spartans return to campus, dad jokes, hugs, dog rubs greet them.”
- Did you hear that NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers is doing a darkness retreat? Washington Post sports columnist Candace Buckner went on one too (sort of) for this delightful and hits-the-mark column: “Aaron Rodgers is going on a darkness retreat. So I did, too.”
- Following the attack on Pearl Harbor and unfounded fears, thousands of Japanese Americans were forced into incarceration camps. One of those camps was at the Santa Anita Race Track in California. Ted Fujioka, who was 17 at the time, wrote letters from the camp to his high school teacher. Those letters are now with Fujioka’s nephew, Darrell Kunitomi, historian for the Los Angeles Times. Kunitomi reads those letters on video in: “Letters from the Japanese incarceration camp at Santa Anita.”
More resources for journalists
- Subscribe to Poynter’s Friday newsletter, Open Tabs with Poynter managing editor Ren LaForme, and get behind-the-scenes stories only available to subscribers.
- How to Improve Your Coverage of LGBTQ+ Communities (Webinar) — Start anytime.
- Poynter’s Beat Academy (March-Oct.) (Webinar series) — Enroll now.
- Lead With Influence (July 2023) (Seminar) — Apply by June 2.
Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at tjones@poynter.org.
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