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Rod “Live Not By Lies” Dreher has shared the following anecdote many times, but it’s especially interesting that he used it, once again, in this Substack post: “Tucker Fired Because Of Religion.”
I am using it to open this podcast post because this week’s “Crossroads” discussion (CLICK HERE to tune that in) Tucker’s Fox News exit: A religion story or not? — GetReligion isn’t really about Tucker Carlson’s forced exit from Fox News — it’s about whether Carlson was a very good fit with the Fox News political and cultural worldview in the first place.
My theory is that Carlson is a conservative populist — as opposed to being a D.C. Beltway Republican — and that his religious beliefs (especially after he stopped drinking) are part of that mix. This created tension with the dominant Fox News management culture, which is rooted in the Page 3 Libertarian Republican beliefs of titan Rupert Murdoch and the network’s original mastermind, the now disgraced Roger Ailes.
This brings me back to Dreher’s anecdote:
I have long wondered why Fox News doesn’t have much religious reporting, or cover things including a religious angle, even though many of their loyal viewers are religious. Now I know. And you should know too. You might recall my telling the story about how the freelancers Fox hired to cover the 2002 Catholic bishops’ meeting in Dallas, the first one after the scandal broke, asked me to brief them on who the players were, and what the issues were. They took copious notes, but when I told them about the homosexual clerical networks, and their roles in the scandal, they told me to stop. “Orders from the top of the network: stay away from that stuff,” I was told. I told them that you couldn’t understand the scandal without that factor. Maybe so, they said, but we are ordered not to touch it.
Thus, Dreher argues that Carlson’s forced exit should open the eyes of Fox News-hooked religious and cultural conservatives.
Continued below.
www.getreligion.org
I am using it to open this podcast post because this week’s “Crossroads” discussion (CLICK HERE to tune that in) Tucker’s Fox News exit: A religion story or not? — GetReligion isn’t really about Tucker Carlson’s forced exit from Fox News — it’s about whether Carlson was a very good fit with the Fox News political and cultural worldview in the first place.
My theory is that Carlson is a conservative populist — as opposed to being a D.C. Beltway Republican — and that his religious beliefs (especially after he stopped drinking) are part of that mix. This created tension with the dominant Fox News management culture, which is rooted in the Page 3 Libertarian Republican beliefs of titan Rupert Murdoch and the network’s original mastermind, the now disgraced Roger Ailes.
This brings me back to Dreher’s anecdote:
I have long wondered why Fox News doesn’t have much religious reporting, or cover things including a religious angle, even though many of their loyal viewers are religious. Now I know. And you should know too. You might recall my telling the story about how the freelancers Fox hired to cover the 2002 Catholic bishops’ meeting in Dallas, the first one after the scandal broke, asked me to brief them on who the players were, and what the issues were. They took copious notes, but when I told them about the homosexual clerical networks, and their roles in the scandal, they told me to stop. “Orders from the top of the network: stay away from that stuff,” I was told. I told them that you couldn’t understand the scandal without that factor. Maybe so, they said, but we are ordered not to touch it.
Thus, Dreher argues that Carlson’s forced exit should open the eyes of Fox News-hooked religious and cultural conservatives.
Continued below.
Podcast: What role did God-talk play in Tucker Carlson's fall at Fox News? Good question — GetReligion
Rod “L ive Not By Lies ” Dreher has shared the following anecdote many times, but it’s especially interesting that he used it, once again, in this Substack post: “ Tucker Fired Because Of Religion .” I am using it to open this podcast post because this week’s “Crossroads” discussion ( CLICK HERE t
www.getreligion.org
