I’m reasonable sure I have made my ethical assessment of Tucker Carlson clear for years now: he’s an opportunist, he’s a demagogue, he’s ambitious and it is impossible to determine what he really believes. He’s also glib and articulate, and I could not care less what he advocates or opposes, since he makes such calculations based on ratings and their perceived usefulness in giving him fame and power.
However, lately Carlson is taking flack because he is in Russia, apparently preparing to interview Vladimir Putin. The criticism is across the partisan and ideological spectrum. The Left, predictably, detests Carlson and would criticize anything he did. But conservatives are attacking him too. Bill Kristol, the NeverTrump director of Defending Democracy Together, said sarcastically, “Perhaps we need a total and complete shutdown of Tucker Carlson re-entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” Bill Browder, the CEO of Hermitage Capital on CNN that Carlson is “either remarkably stupid or consciously evil.” “He’s not stupid,” replied CNN’s John Harwood. Adam Kinzinger, who along with Liz Cheney served as one of the only two Republicans on the House select committee that turned the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot into an extended “Get Trump!” kangaroo court, pronounced Carlson “a traitor”.
While he was still considered respectable, Dan Rather interviewed Saddam Hussein as the U.S. was preparing to go to war with Iraq. Barbara Walters twice traveled to Cuba to interview anti-American dictator Fidel Castro, and was hailed for it. A new documentary running on HBO shows late “60 Minutes” star Mike Wallace interviewing Ayatollah Khomeini at the height of the hostage crisis in 1980, and later Putin. These interviews are presented as evidence of Wallace’s skill and dedication to broadcast journalism.
There is no logical or reasonable way to attack Carlson for seeking to interview Putin while regarding those interviews from the past (and others) as legitimate reporting. Carlson (naturally), defends his intentions, saying in part, “Americans have a right to know all they can about a war they’re implicated in, and we have the right to tell them about it because we are Americans too…We paid for this trip ourselves. We took no money from any government or group. Nor are we charging people to see the interview. It is not behind a paywall.”
Will the interview just serve as a vehicle for pro-Putin and anti-Ukraine propaganda? “Well, let’s wait and see on that,” says The American Spectator, reasonably enough. Will Carlson use the interview to burnish his own reputation? Is there any doubt? So what?
Freddy Gray adds,
No doubt, unless Carlson calls Putin a murderer to his face and storms out of the interview in disgust, he will be widely branded as a “useful idiot.” But that’s another point on which traditional journalism has become unhealthily detached from its purpose. Broadcast journalists, in particular, believe they must “push back” — which today means reacting negatively and emotionally — when dealing with controversial politicians, else they will be vilified for being soft or sycophantic. Interviewers feel unless they have skewered their subject they have somehow failed. Declining to challenge someone is seen as an endorsement.
That’s idiotic, of course, and makes news journalism ever more tedious — as pompous presenters insist on talking over their subjects and making themselves the center of attention.
Bingo. Mike Wallace was criticized for behaving unusually respectfully to the Ayatollah, at one point relating Anwar Sadat’s negative comments about the Iran ruler and begging Khomeini’s pardon, a stance he never took when grilling his targets on “60 Minutes.” Wallace, however, correctly saw his job as being seen as a friendly interlocutor, increasing the likelihood that the Ayatollah would be candid.
Interviewing the bad guys once was regarded as simply the practice of good journalism, letting the public decide what such interviews revealed. Now what qualify as 21st Century journalists believe is that they should decide what the American public reads and hears, with careful and relentlessly biased framing to ensure that the public reaches the “right” conclusions. Carlson, The Spectator’s Gray concludes,
“…is highly critical of Washington’s foreign-policy establishment — and far less hawkish on Russia and Iran than most of the successful current-affairs hosts, party-line hacks and dubiously funded think-tank-affiliated pundits who dominate the airwaves whenever war is in the news. But that doesn’t make him, as many people are desperate to claim, a Russian asset. It makes him a proper journalist. There’s not many of them around.”
Well, let say that on this occasion he is acting like a “proper journalist” because it suits Tucker’s agenda. Nonetheless interviewing Putin helps the public objectively evaluate the facts, which is what journalism once regarded as its duty.
Ethics Alarms 
I think Carlson has pulled a coup on the establishment media. They are pea green with envy that he got such an important interview. I bet they are thinking; “How dare this upstart independent journalist weasel in on our territory.” I love it and cannot wait to see the interview. I too would like to see and know more about Putin than what has been prepackaged and fed to us. People talk about the dangers of highly processed food. I think our current highly processed media is far worse. No matter which outlet you choose it all taste the same. Carlson interview should be refreshing.
UK lefty idiot and professional asshole George Galloway (I still salute the guy who hit him in the mouth and broke his jaw) interviewed Saddam Hussein. Was that a coup also? He’s also a Putin apologist (also as in in addition to being a lefty idiot, etc., not as in Tucker is also a Putin apologist). TC is not a Ukraine ass-kisser, and he has said that the US should have other priorities than giving a t-shirt-wearing foreigner (Zelensky) everything he asks for, but he is no Putin apologist. It isn’t being a Putin apologist to point out that Zelensky really isn’t that great of a guy (point of fact he’s kind of a tyrant) and that Russia has 100 million more people than Ukraine, so the demographics don’t favor Ukraine winning ultimately. That’s more playing devil’s advocate in a situation where an opposing position SHOULD be considered. However, I wonder if he’d be advocating that position if he wasn’t somewhat unique in it.
A lot of us fell for the pro-Ukraine fever that swept the west almost 2 years ago now, I know I even went so far as to don a US/Ukraine flag pin and volunteer my services to aid Ukrainian refugees seeking to navigate the immigration system here (a lot of my colleagues don’t like the fact that I did not do so for immigrants from Latin America, saying I only get involved where white people are concerned). The thing with Americans getting into a new cause is they tend to burn hot, fast, and out ultimately. After 9/11 we were united like after Pearl Harbor, but that fizzled after Iraq proved to be based on ginned-up intelligence and after the left saw the chance to beat GWB over the head with Hurrican Katrina. After the death of George Floyd it was almost the opposite – everyone jumped on the DEI bandwagon and became united in their hatred of this country as a land of slavers and racists. Now that’s starting to fizzle, as it becomes obvious that hasn’t improved anything.
It’s 2 years later in Ukraine, the Russians have taken big losses, but they aren’t anywhere near being beaten, Ukraine’s summer offensive didn’t go anywhere, and we have poured huge amounts of money into this conflict and gotten very little return. Maybe it’s time to step back and reassess this. Realistically we have 3 choices: escalate and try to seriously win, and risk a widening of the war and, at the extreme end, WW3 and possible nuclear weapon use, try to impose a peace, and look like we blinked, boosting Putin’s stock while diminishing our own, or continue to bleed money and let this disrupt things by supporting Ukraine enough for it not to fall, but not enough for it to win. Maybe the last is the most palatable from a politician’s point of view, giving them another problem to campaign on fixing, but never actually fix.
Steve-O,
That reminds me of the premise in 1984 about keeping all the world’s resources tied up in an endless war over the one disputed area left in the world. If I recall correctly (I guess I need to read it again, since it has been over 25 years since I last read it), that was to ensure that the people were always shorted on necessities and could never prosper, no matter how industrious they were.
Following the Just War Doctrine, providing the Ukrainians with aid, but not in sufficient amount to overwhelm the Russian forces, is ethically illicit. Specifically, as the Just War Doctrine requires a reasonable chance of success and that greater evils are not inflicted in the process, by providing Ukraine with enough aid to muster significant resistance, but not enough for a decisive victory, both of those points are violated. Ukraine does not stand a reasonable chance of victory, not when a huge chunk of its population has fled the country, and Russia can keep with the time-honored tradition of continually throwing more men into the meat grinder. Furthermore, the longer this conflict is prolonged, the more people die, the more infrastructure is damaged, the likelier a famine becomes, and so on.
Maybe the Biden administration hopes to use Ukraine to bleed Russia so that Russia is less prepared should a broader conflict erupt. However, that would not justify letting the Ukrainians suffer the brunt of that effort.
Did this not happen in Afghanistan in the 1980’s?
I know you hate him and why, but it doesn’t make sense. I mean, he is no more partisan or a demagogue than Walter Cronkite seems to have been. The difference is that Cronkite carefully hid his duplicity and there was no opposition media to expose him. Cronkite was part of the same media that intentionally covered up the Holodomor and smeared any who tried to spread the truth, the same ones who hid FDR’s paralysis, who hid JFK’s affair with a Nazi spy and his medical issues, who lied about the Tet Offensive to undermine the US government. I’m not saying that Tucker Carlson is a fantastic person and journalist, I am just saying that I don’t understand why he is so singled out when every mainstream news personality is the same way, except Tucker has decided his audience is the right instead of the left. You can say it is because of his popularity, but his popularity is just because he is speaking to the right instead of the left and there are 100 ‘journalists’ on the left for every one on the right.
I watched Cronkite for a long time. He was biased, but he never was a demagogue, and there is no evidence of his admitting behind closed doors that he was advocating positions he didn’t believe in. Carlson doesn’t report news, he processes it to fit the opinion he thinks will go over best with his fans. He’s more like Father Coughlin, or more recently, Bill O’Reilly and Ann Coulter than Uncle Walter.