CNN’s Brianna Keilar mocked Tucker Carlson’s news coverage with a video montage on Friday, as part of a lengthy segment that also took aim at Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch’s comments dismissing a post-election ratings decline at Fox News.
“Fox, facing a ratings slump after its de facto executive producer lost the presidential election, is leaning more heavily into its buffet of cultural war cuisine,” Keilar said on CNN Friday. “I know it’s about as predictable as singing Girls Just Wanna Have Fun really badly on karaoke night, and it’s predictably hypocritical to boot.”
At a conference on Thursday, Lachlan Murdoch said he wasn’t worried about the ratings of Fox News. He noted how MSNBC surged under President Donald Trump, and said Fox would play the same role of “loyal opposition” under Biden. That comment came the same day Jason Kilar, the CEO of CNN parent company WarnerMedia, made a similar remark about his own network. He said the coronavirus pandemic was “really good for ratings” — a comment he subsequently apologized for.
Keilar played a June 2020 clip of Fox News prime time host Tucker Carlson bashing reporters for feeding their viewers “partisan junk food designed to make them feel full even as they waste away.”
The Fox News host even went so far as to apologize to his viewers for “the extent” his own show participated in that form of reporting.
The CNN anchor played several clips of Carlson segments that followed his apology, which included the host lamenting the “canceling” of the Fourth of July, bashing the liberal “rage mob,” claiming Dr. Jill Biden is not a doctor.
“We’re pretty sure the pronoun thing will appeal to whatever tiny group of deluded unhappy people still believe that destroying nature’s gender roles is a form of liberation,” Carlson said in another clip, in a shot at the transgender community. “Talk about a war on nature.” Carlson additionally vowed, in the clips aired by Keilar, that he would exclusively refer to Vice President Kamala Harris as “the ex-girlfriend of Montel Williams.”
Holding back laughter following the Carlson montage, Keilar noted that in January, Fox News saw their worst comparative ratings in two decades, adding, “and now it’s going even further off the anti-truth rails in an effort to remedy that. Fox is going full Tucker.”
Fox News faced a steep decline in its ratings after the 2020 election. The network has recovered some of its viewership since, and placed first in prime time for the month of February.
Keilar went on to bash Carlson’s form of journalism, noting that he recently fended off a defamation case filed against him by arguing that his show offers “nonliteral commentary.”
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