On The Daily Beast’s Fever Dreams podcast, Media Matters’ Nikki McCann Ramirez explains how Tucker Carlson serves as the “agenda setter” for the right
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Nikki McCann Ramirez explains how Tucker Carlson serves as the “agenda setter” for the right
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From the April 20, 2022, edition of The Daily Beast's Fever Dreams
NIKKI MCCANN RAMIREZ (ASSOCIATE RESEARCH DIRECTOR MEDIA MATTERS): It speaks to the fact that Tucker is sourcing a lot of his material from these conspiracy theories, from these ultra right content creators and laundering them to a national audience. Fox admits that Tucker Carlson's program is not news, it's entertainment, and I think Tucker pretty much functions as the agenda setter for the right. And when you start to see or when you realize that he's sourcing a lot of that agenda from these niche Twitter accounts, he's like far-right microblogs. You start to see how much of a funnel he is for that type of ideology. And again, I don't think it's a coincidence that Tucker is bringing this sort of bromeotherapy pseudoscientific medical world to his viewers. There is a profit motive, motive there. Obviously, Alex Jones made a ton of money hawking supplements. It was for a long time kind of one of his main sources of income.
The connection there, I don't think it can be overstated. I think people who watch the far right on a regular basis are very in tune to these connections. But the average viewer or the casual scroller who sees the tweet may not necessarily know what those connections are and where this information is being sourced from. So when someone like Alex Jones says, "Oh yeah, the producer at Fox asked to use my," I think it's a ranch, "my ranch in Texas, and I'm super excited about it," that's a flag. It's concerning when people like Tucker are sourcing their material from people like Jones, from people like Gateway Pundit. I can't say that there is a direct connection between Tucker and, you know, some of these more aggressive, more neo fascist accounts. But the material is definitely there. And it's a little bit of a food chain that makes its way from the far-right internet ecosphere to Tucker Carlson and then to national audiences who walk away with the impression that they're getting this from like, quote-unquote trusted source.