The right-wing chudosphere will be merciless toward @JonahDispatch and @stephenfhayes for resigning as Fox contributors. But they made the right call. Nobody who loves this country should tolerate Tucker Carlson’s 1/6 revisionism even for a second. https://t.co/TOnL7cHPDM
— Berny Belvedere (@bernybelvedere) November 22, 2021
Asked about the resignation of Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes, a Fox News executive said that the network did not plan to re-sign them as contributors when their contract came up next year: https://t.co/taz13lOTUW
— Jeremy Barr (@jeremymbarr) November 22, 2021
Whatever else you might say about Goldberg or Hayes, they’re both dedicated careerists. Their simultaneous depersoning from the FOXosphere seems, to me, like a potentially hopeful sign. IMO, Tucker Carlson is the contemporary version of Father Coughlin in the 1930s, who was generally considered an unstoppable media force until, suddenly, he wasn’t.
… Goldberg and Hayes joined Fox in 2009 as paid contributors, appearing regularly to offer commentary and analysis, but their role in the broader media ecosystem — and their positioning on the network’s ideological spectrum — had changed in the intervening years.
After lengthy careers in conservative media — Goldberg spent 21 years at National Review, and Hayes served as the top editor at the Weekly Standard — they emerged as critics of Donald Trump and found themselves on a small island with other conservative dissenters during his administration. They joined forces in 2019 and started the Dispatch, a digital news and commentary site that approaches national politics from a center-right perspective.
But that willingness to criticize Trump put them at odds with Fox’s prime time stars, who remain largely supportive of the former president as he weighs a possible 2024 campaign. Their recent appearances were mostly limited to straight-news hours, including anchor Bret Baier’s 6 p.m. program…
nothing wrong w/ that per se. I’m just suggesting outcome
— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) November 22, 2021
i mean, it's been clear for awhile now that carlson's running the whole, entire show at fox news, and that murdoch the elder doesn't care because he's 300 years old and murdoch the younger doesn't care because he's a moron, so this is basically what i'd expect https://t.co/XCDoeI7M9g
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) November 22, 2021
there are three things that i can think of that change fox news' trajectory, one is that carlson starts bleeding viewers in a way that harms their licensing fees, two is that they hit regulatory trouble and the third i am going to not say on this website
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) November 22, 2021
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