It’s been a wild week for network news. Tucker Carlson, who hosted one of the most popular news shows on television, was suddenly ousted from Fox News, on the heels of both a hostile workplace complaint against him and the network’s settlement in a high-profile lawsuit that began to expose just how brazenly and knowingly Fox News anchors lied on the air. At CNN, longtime anchor Don Lemon was also let go in a move that he said left him “stunned”, and came after public blowback over Lemon’s on-air comments about women. NBC Universal fired CEO Jeff Shell after corroborating a sexual harassment complaint against him.
Much remains unknown about all three terminations, particularly those of Carlson and Lemon. But the ouster of all three does suggest something may have shifted in television newsrooms. The question is whether it’s an elevated commitment to gender equality, or simply more self-interested decisions taking on the veil of morality.
I’m going to spoil this column for you now: it is almost surely network self-interest.
The good news is that, if NBCUniversal is any example, reputable networks have far less tolerance than they once did for truly egregious behavior that has been investigated and corroborated. In a statement, Shell said, “I had an inappropriate relationship with a woman in the company, which I deeply regret.” The decision to remove him from his role comes several years after the peak of the #MeToo movement, which shined light on harassment and abuse at the hands of powerful men, often over women who worked for them. While #MeToo, and the feminist movement that undergirded it, has seen a backlash in recent years, it unquestionably changed Americans’ understanding of power and our tolerance for everything from boorish chauvinism to outright sexual assault. The NBC ouster seems to reflect this profound shift.
So what about Carlson? He is accused of creating a hostile work environment, using vulgar and offensive language to talk about women, including his own colleagues. But he was also one of several Fox News anchors at the heart of the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against the network, which settled for $787.5m. Although the case failed to get as far as many observers hoped, what did come out was broadly embarrassing for Fox: it was clear that Fox anchors, including Carlson, and Fox higher-ups, including Rupert Murdoch, did not believe that the 2020 election was stolen, but made those claims on the air anyway; that Carlson and other anchors believed many members of the Trump team to be unintelligent and dishonest and disliked the former president (“I hate him passionately,” read one of Carlson’s texts); and that Carlson was also disdainful of management at Fox News.
Was Carlson fired because Fox, a notorious bastion of sexual harassment and a network that allows for brazen misogyny on the air, was worried about the workplace harassment suit against its top anchor? Maybe – former top Fox anchor Bill O’Reilly was also fired after several sexual harassment complaints. Perhaps Carlson’s firing was related to the Dominion lawsuit – either because the Dominion lawyers back-channeled that they wanted his head or because what came out during discovery was so damning that Murdoch wanted Carlson gone, or perhaps because Carlson, who was in contract negotiations, was simply too expensive considering the huge payout Fox now owes. Whatever the reason, Carlson is another of Fox’s best-known entities, who was accused of workplace harassment and subsequently lost his job. Feminists are not generally cheering for Fox’s success, but we can at least hope that other men at the network take note.
Don Lemon’s firing is the muddiest of the three. Back in February, Lemon made a horribly ill-conceived point about age in politics when, in response to former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley’s proposal for a competency test for older politicians, he said, “This whole talk about age makes me uncomfortable,” and added, “I think it is the wrong road to go down. She says people, you know, politicians or something are not in their prime. Nikki Haley isn’t in her prime, sorry – when a woman is considered to be in her prime in her 20s and 30s and maybe 40s.” What Lemon seemingly meant was that stereotypes about being in one’s “prime” are harmful, and have been unfairly leveled at middle-aged women – does Nikki Haley, in other words, really want to go there. But what he said is that women are in their prime in their 20s and 30s; unspoken was the claim that this is when women are the most sexually appealing.
That comment was offensive and foolish, even if Lemon didn’t mean to say quite what he said. And the aftermath was brutal: Lemon was broadly condemned, and other reports of bad behavior began to surface. Whether that was enough for CNN to fire him, though, remains an open question.
I wish it were the case that the #MeToo movement had so thoroughly changed American society that sexual harassment, sexual assault and sexist comments were all enough for men to see proportionate consequences. Unfortunately, that’s far from the case. And while these big network shake-ups are all happening in the same week, the throughline seems to be less “networks are taking misogyny seriously” and more “networks are acting in their own calculated self-interest”.
Sometimes the interests of women and those of big companies line up, and badly behaved men are pushed out. But even with these high-profile filings, I’m not sure feminists can take a victory lap quite yet.
This article was amended on 26 April 2023 to clarify the nature of the allegations made and add further context.
Jill Filipovic is the author of the The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness
