Tucker Carlson, speaking in Washington in March 2019. Chip Somodevilla (Getty Images)
Fox News doesn’t want Tucker Carlson on its screen, but it also doesn’t want him on a competing network or in the creation of social media content. The Rupert Murdoch-owned news network has accused its former star presenter of breaching his contract for posting a video of his comments on Twitter, Axios reported.
The American medium had access to a copy of the letter sent to the presenter by the network’s lawyers. “This afternoon we learned of Mr. Tucker Carlson’s appearance on Twitter in a video that lasted more than 10 minutes,” the letter said, according to Axios, who adds that the letter insists that the ultra-conservative moderator’s services and commentator They are “completely exclusive” to Fox due to the agreement that governs the relationship between the parties.
Fox states in the letter that under its contract, Carlson is “prohibited from providing any service, whether over the Internet through streaming or similar distribution, or any other digital distribution known or contemplated in the future.”
According to US media, the reaction of Carlson’s lawyers is to invoke freedom of expression and the fact that Twitter is not a direct competitor to Fox News. “Fox defends its existence on the basis of free speech. “Now they want to take away Tucker Carlson’s right to speak freely for using social media to share his thoughts on current events,” his attorneys said in a statement.
The Fox News star anchor was fired in April after the network reached a settlement with Dominion to avoid a defamation lawsuit. Carlson announced a month ago via a three-minute video on Twitter that he would soon start a version of the show he made on the social network’s news channel. The first chapter is a somewhat delusional and conspiratorial home-produced monologue, a fixed take of more than 10 minutes in which he discusses, among other things, the war in Ukraine (attack on Zelenskyy and accusing Kiev of having blown up the dam) and the aliens are talking things.
Carlson was one of the moderators who spread the vote-rigging hoax in the 2020 presidential election. The intercepted messages and internal communications show that Fox anchors and executives did not believe the lie they were fueling. Fox News agreed to settle Dominion for $787.5 million and avoid a trial in the defamation lawsuit.
The Wall Street Journal, also controlled by Rupert Murdoch, reported that Tucker Carlson earned $20 million a year from Fox News. As Axios further announced, the moderator accused the chain of fraud and breach of contract after being kicked out of the show. The presenter’s contract runs until January 2025 and the chain intended to continue paying his salary to prevent him from signing with another channel.