Did misogyny factor into Tucker Carlson’s firing?

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Apr 28, 2023 View in browser   By Sophie Gardner POLITICO illustration/Photos by AP Photo, Getty Images, iStock Tucker Carlson, Don Lemon and Jeff Shell have three things in common: they were all larger-than-life names at major media organizations, they were all removed from or “agreed to part ways” with their outlets in the past week, and they all had recent allegations of misogynistic behavior in the workplace. The string of departures started on Sunday, when NBCUniversal CEO Shell’s firing was made public. Comcast, NBCUniversal’s parent company, announced that Shell was being removed over an “inappropriate relationship.” The following day, Fox News announced that Carlson, who hosted the hugely popular show Tucker Carlson Tonight, was leaving the network, effective immediately — a development which seemed to be fairly new to Carlson, who told viewers on his final broadcast, “We’ll be back on Monday.” He was soon followed by Lemon, the former co-host of “CNN This Morning,” who announced his own firing from CNN in a tweet. To be clear: Carlson and Lemon’s removals have not been directly tied to the accusations against them. And Carlson’s departure is suspected to be the result of a host of other factors related to Dominion Voting Systems' lawsuit against Fox. But it seems unlikely that the widely publicized claims of workplace misogyny wasn’t a factor in the firings. Carlson “parted ways” with Fox just over a month after a former booker for his show, Abby Grossberg, filed two lawsuits against Fox, one in New York and one in Delaware. The suit filed in New York alleges a culture of sexism and misogyny at Fox News, especially among those who worked on Carlson’s show. Among a host of claims, Grossberg said that, on her first day, the office was decorated with photos of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a revealing swimsuit and that staffers debated which candidate for Michigan Governor – incumbent Democratic Gretchen Whitmer or Republican Tudor Dixon – they would rather sleep with. (Her Delaware lawsuit claimed that the network’s lawyers coached her to make misleading statements when deposed in the Dominion lawsuit.) Lemon first came under fire in February for his on-air comments claiming that 51-year-old Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley is not “in her prime,” and, amid protests from his co-anchors, insisting that a woman is in her prime “in her 20s and 30s and maybe 40s.” Then, earlier this month, Variety published a report claiming that he displayed “open hostility to many female co-workers.” Meanwhile, Shell was fired after an internal investigation corroborated CNBC anchor and senior international correspondent Hadley Gamble’s accusations of sexual harassment. Twitter was abuzz this week with discussions of the three media bigwigs departures – and with plenty of speculation as to why – including theories that Shell’s downfall was the work of Russian President Vladimir Putin or that Carlson left the network to pursue a presidential bid. And it’s true that each case, especially Carlson’s, is shrouded in a web of complexity that makes a single motivation hard to pinpoint. But missing from the debate was the possibility that any of the men were fired because the networks were simply worried about protecting their female employees. Why? “In general, we are a culture, if not a globe, that does not take women's issues terribly seriously,” Allison Butler, co-author of The Media and Me: A Guide to Critical Media Literacy for Young People, told Women Rule. “And so when there is a movement, or something does seem to be taken seriously, that in and of itself is surprising.” But Butler also doesn’t believe the companies were protecting their workplace environments. She thinks they were protecting their reputations. “If you are in the executive level of running a private for profit media empire, for good or for ill, it is not your job to actually care about the well being of individual employees,” she said. “You care about the well-being of your profit margins. And you care about how your public image contributes to your profit margin.” Profit margins are also the reason why the accusations against these three men got so much coverage in the first place, according to Butler, perhaps contributing to their eventual downfall. “The #MeToo movement has certainly made it clear that women's issues are something that mainstream audiences are interested in knowing more about right now,” she said. “As human beings, I would like to say that we are addressing women's issues because they matter. But in reality, the more skeptical part of me says that the mainstream media is addressing women's issues because it's going to make them money.” “But can women ideally get some justice along the way? I sure hope so.”   INTERNATIONAL REPUBLICAN INSTITUTE HONORS “WOMEN OF IRAN”: POLITICO is proud to partner with the International Republican Institute (IRI) in support of this year’s John S. 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