Fox News host and Daily Caller editor-in-chief Tucker Carlson acknowledged he instructs his employees that “you can't go after Fox ... because I work there.” Carlson added that the rule is a “conflict” and “Is that unfair? Yes, it is. But that's what it is.”
Carlson's policy surfaced after blogger Mickey Kaus quit the Caller when a piece critical of Fox News was yanked from the website. Kaus said Carlson told him he took down the post because “We can't trash Fox on the site. I work there.”
Carlson acknowledged his rule prohibiting criticism of Fox News during a Real Clear Politics interview posted on April 2:
CARLSON: I have two rules. One is you can't criticize the families of the people who work here. And the other rule is you can't go after Fox. Only for one reason. Not because they're conservative or we agree them; because they're doing the Lord's work. Nothing like that. It's because I work there. I'm an anchor on Fox. And so I had a couple of my employees say, “Well, isn't that a conflict?” To which I said, “yes, it's a conflict. For sure.” It's a conflict that I am the owner of The Daily Caller -- my business partner and I own it. And I'm an employee of Fox. That's a conflicted situation, but I don't know what to do about it.
Carlson added: “You don't criticize your employer. I mean that's just kind of 101 ... Is that unfair? Yes, it is. But that's what it is.” Prior to being hired by Fox in 2009, Carlson was one of Fox's fiercest critics, calling the network “a mean, sick group of people” and The O'Reilly Factor a “shit” show hosted by “a thin-skinned blowhard.”
In a 2010 interview, Carlson claimed that his then-new site was “not going to suck up to people,” stating: “Our goal is not to get Republicans elected. Our goal is to explain what your government is doing. We're not going to suck up to people in power, the way so many have. There's been an enormous amount of throne-sniffing ... It's disgusting.”
Though The Daily Caller won't allow criticism of Fox, there are a lot of things they'll still permit. This includes employing blatant sexists and producing sexist content; heckling the president during a Rose Garden address; publishing anti-science “reporting” denying the existence of depression; selling out readers to a firm they previously said is headed by a fraudster; and failing to adequately correct errors, among many other issues.
Washington Examiner correspondent Eddie Scarry tweeted in response to Carlson's admission that Glenn Beck's The Blaze enacted a similar policy against criticizing Fox News. Scarry, who worked for the conservative website from 2011-2014, wrote: “100% true: I was told at TheBlaze not to write about Fox News. But no editor there would have admitted that in public.” He added that the rule “was because they didn't want to upset Fox, which has heavy clout with cable providers. Blaze really wants to be on Comcast.”
UPDATE: Mickey Kaus tweeted the following in response to Tucker's admission (h/t Erik Wemple):
Tucker admirably honest about his No-Trash Fox rule. Except he didn't tell me about it when he signed me up (or ever) http://t.co/XeHxghMUtP
-- Mickey Kaus (@kausmickey) April 2, 2015
Kaus expanded in a post on his website, writing that “The Rule is not sustainable. We're about to enter a media driven Republican presidential primary in which Fox is accused, not without basis, of favoring Jeb Bush" and “that means everything Daily Caller writes about Fox is suspect (of being BS) since they are presumably leaving out any bad parts, even if true” (emphasis in original).