Anti-Defamation League CEO: Fox needs to rethink its entire primetime lineup
Tucker Carlson sparked a wave of backlash with comments about the so-called “white replacement theory” on his Fox show Thursday evening. In response, Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt sent a letter urging Fox to dump Carlson, and now he’s saying the network needs to rethink its entire lineup.
“Fox needs to look at their entire primetime lineup,” Greenblatt told CNN’s Chief Media Correspondent Brian Stelter on “Reliable Sources” Sunday. “Let’s acknowledge Fox isn’t alone in this,” he added. “They have advertisers. They have affiliates. There are cable companies that carry their signal.”
With former president Donald Trump out of the White House, Fox is continuing to focus on far-right content and conspiracy theories in an effort to win back the audience it lost following the 2020 election. The network recently updated its lineup to include more opinion programming and less straight news.
In January, Fox announced that it was removing one of its only nighttime hours of news coverage and replacing it with an opinion show. The move signified a further shift toward the right-wing opinion programming that Fox viewers overwhelmingly prefer, and underscored the increased competition from other right-wing outlets including Newsmax and One America News Network.
In a Friday letter to Fox, Greenblatt said “Carlson’s full-on embrace of the white supremacist replacement theory on yesterday’s show and his repeated allusions to racist themes in past segments are a bridge too far.”
“Fox should take these fringe ideas and put them where they belong — on the fringe — not place them in primetime, where they serve as a gateway drug to tens of millions of Americans,” Greenblatt said.
