As reporting revealed that the 18-year-old white gunman who allegedly targeted a Black community in Buffalo, New York, and killed 10 people was motivated by the false, racist belief that white people are being deliberately “replaced” in the United States, several major news organizations pointed out that Fox News prime-time host Tucker Carlson has been a major influence in mainstreaming the once-fringe belief. But a Media Matters review found that the Sunday and evening news programs from ABC, CBS, and NBC did not mention Carlson's rhetoric, even though they extensively covered the shooting.
On May 14, NBC News extremism reporter Ben Collins explained that the shooter posted a massive screed online which “includes dozens of pages antisemitic and racist memes, repeatedly citing the racist ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory frequently pushed by white supremacists, which falsely claims white people are being ‘replaced’ in America as part of an elaborate Jewish conspiracy theory.”
As Fox News’ biggest star, Carlson has repeatedly promoted this white supremacist lie with the blessings of his Fox Corp. superiors (though he is not the only Fox personality to spread this message). An exhaustive New York Times review published two weeks before the Buffalo shooting found that Carlson pushed this idea in more than 400 episodes of his Fox program. And Carlson’s evil effort to mainstream this lie has been wildly successful: A recent poll found that “about 1 in 3 U.S. adults believes an effort is underway to replace U.S.-born Americans with immigrants for electoral gains.” Carlson has continued to push this lie on his Fox show even after the massacre in Buffalo.
Among print newspapers, a New York Times story on the Buffalo suspect's motivation behind the shooting explained that “no public figure has promoted replacement theory more loudly or relentlessly" than Carlson. A Washington Post report noted that Carlson “has championed the ideology” and that he’s “been unapologetic about his discussion of themes underlying the ‘great replacement’ narrative.” Another Post article explained that the “once-fringe racist idea” has been promoted by “media figures such as Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham of Fox News,” and it went into detail about how Carlson and other Fox figures, current and former, have promoted the lie.
Cable news outlets better explained the role that Carlson has played in mainstreaming this hatred. CNN’s John Avlon highlighted the April investigation from the Times, which found Carlson has promoted the racist conspiracy theory hundreds of times.