Journalism

Tucker Carlson hasn’t left Fox Corp. quite yet. The company’s Fox News Media unit has hours and hours of various specials and original programming the controversial anchor developed for the subscription-based streaming service Fox Nation, and doesn’t appear poised to take any of that content down. The Carlson-created options currently available on the service are manifold.

The TV group’s The National Desk news service will air instead of local news beginning May 15 and 17 news staffers have been let go. Pictured: KTVL host Carmine Gemei speaks with Natalie Webber of the Oregon Department of Forestry.

Beginning May 15, Sinclair’s NBC affiliate will replace local newscasts with Sinclair’s The National Desk. WNWO shifted production of its local newscasts in 2017 to a sister station in South Bend, Ind., and anchors were no longer based in Toledo.

BBC Chair Richard Sharp has resigned after a report found he breached appointment rules by failing to declare his role in the Boris Johnson loan scandal. In a statement given prior to the release of the long-awaited report, Sharp said the conclusion by Adam Heppinstall KC had found that he had “breached the code for public appointments” and he is resigning “to prioritise the interests of the BBC.”

Kate O’Brian, president of Scripps News, explains how the bulk of its weekday broadcast hours will go to live as of May 1 and how the network manages its complex web of collaborations between its own reporters fanned out across the U.S., Scripps’ local stations, its hubs in Denver and Washington, D.C., and Scripps-owned Court TV. A full transcript of the conversation is included.

It’s not just Fox News that has been battered by the self-inflicted injuries exposed in its $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems. By putting pandering before honest journalism, it has sullied the Fox brand and harmed other journalists far removed from its demagoguery and slanted reporting.

See full videos from all the sessions at TVNewsCheck’s inaugural Programming Everywhere event at the NAB Show in Las Vegas, including panels on syndication’s changing business model, fresh approaches to news content, the future of sports on broadcast TV and where FAST channels are directing the evolution of broadcasting. This content, which previously was limited to TVN premium members, is now available to all.

Earlier this week, U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (N.J.) took to the Senate floor to express his concerns over the Federal Communications Commission’s review of the proposed Standard General-Tegna transaction. His is the latest in a chorus of alarm bells sounding over a flawed merger review process that risks undermining both investment in local television stations’ free service to the public and media diversity.

The niche conservative news channel is still small compared with Fox News, but its viewership has doubled and in some time slots even tripled since Tucker Carlson was dismissed.

Word is that E.W. Scripps is laying off 300 people as part of a previously reported restructuring. Scripps News correspondent Cat Sandoval tweeted about losing her job and warned more layoffs were following.

CNN announced a notable change on Thursday morning: Dana Bash is the new host of Inside Politics on weekdays. Bash is a 30-year CNN veteran and is finally getting the opportunity to solo-host her own show. She succeeds John King who has been tapped to lead a new reporting project focused on voters in key battleground states as the 2024 presidential campaign cycle gets underway.

Vice News Tonight celebrated its 1,000th episode this past March, and now the award-winning weekly news program is being canceled. The cancellation, which will officially take place in May, comes as Vice Media Group begins layoffs within its Vice News unit.

Executives from The Weather Channel, Fox News and Capitol Broadcasting have rolled up their sleeves and dived into their organizations’ deep and messy archives. They told a panel at last week’s Programming Everywhere event that doing so has yielded untold — and very monetizable — treasures. Pictured (l-r): Nora Zimmett, The Weather Channel; Sam Peterson, Bitcentral; Jon Accarrino, Capitol Broadcasting; and Ben Ramos, Fox Archive. (Alyssa Wesley photo)

We find ourselves in a perilous moment. Democracy is under withering assault. Technological advances have empowered propagandists to profit through discontent and disinformation. A coordinated, 50-year campaign waged by one of our major political parties to denigrate the media and call objective reality into question has reached its logical conclusion: we occupy a nation in which a sizable portion of the public cannot reliably tell fact from fiction. The rise of a powerful nativist movement has provided a test not only of American multiracial democracy, but also of the institutions sworn to protect it.

The former Fox News host posted a video on Twitter Wednesday shortly after 8 p.m. ET, the time his Fox show used to begin, that talked about a lack of honest political debate in the media. Carlson said one of the things he noticed, “when you step away from the noise for a few days,” is how nice some people are, and how hilarious some are. Fox fired its most popular personality on Monday without explanation, less than a week after settling a lawsuit concerning the spread of lies about the 2020 presidential election.

After a long career in television, I’m hoping to do my bit to secure the future of trusted information and civility in media by launching a not-for-profit newspaper company in Maine.

Fox News has agreed to give voting technology company Smartmatic additional documents about Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch and other senior corporate executives. Smartmatic is suing the network for $2.7 billion over its airing of 2020 election lies. The agreement was announced Wednesday at a court hearing in Manhattan. New York Supreme Court Judge David Cohen scheduled the hearing after Smartmatic raised concerns about whether Fox was complying with its pretrial obligations to turn over relevant evidence.

Tucker Carlson has long been an inescapable presence in culture — the conservative news host’s show Tucker Carlson Tonight was a frequent chart-topper among the cable news group and clips from his Fox News broadcasts often trended on social media. But for advertisers, Carlson’s reach wasn’t necessarily a desirable one, and his surprise departure from the Fox News fold may be a positive sign for the network.