Janine Jackson interviewed Free Press’s Tim Karr about defunding Fox News racism for the April 30, 2021, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Janine Jackson: What hasn’t Tucker Carlson done lately? Earlier this month, the primetime Fox News host touted the white supremacist “great replacement theory.” Democrats, he cried to viewers, are “trying to replace the current electorate” with “new people, more obedient voters from the Third World”: “Every time they import a new voter, I become disenfranchised as a current voter; I have less political power because they are importing a brand new electorate.”
More recently, Carlson encouraged his acolytes:
Your response when you see children wearing masks as they play should be no different from your response to seeing someone beat a kid in Walmart: Call the police immediately. Contact Child Protective Services. Keep calling until someone arrives. What you’re looking at is child abuse, and you are morally obligated to attempt to prevent it.
OK, you, a non-Fox watcher, say: Tucker Carlson is a dangerous humanoid, and I wish he didn’t have a platform for millions of people open to that particular strain of weaponized ignorance. But enough people or sponsors must want it on the air, or it wouldn’t be there.
Well, here to help us see what’s amiss with that idea, and how we could disrupt it, is Tim Karr. He’s senior director of strategy and communications at Free Press, and he wrote the recent piece, “Tucker Carlson’s Racism: Paid For by You.” He joins us now by phone from New Jersey. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Tim Karr.
Tim Karr: Hi, Janine, how are you?
JJ: I’m all right, but boy, you know….
As media critics, we know it’s important to expose the structure, the workings of media, because it’s somewhat hidden, and because so much is predicated on it, you know. “If it didn’t have an audience, it wouldn’t be on your TV, because media is a market, after all”: We know that that is a pervasive, but misleading, idea. When it comes to Tucker Carlson, it’s not that he doesn’t have fans, but what complicates the notion that he’s on my TV because somehow I want him there?
TK: You, like me, might remember the good old days of over-the-air broadcast television, when we got our news and information for free. Unfortunately, at the time, in my childhood, it was only like four or five local television stations. But we’ve now transitioned to this cable era, where we can buy packages that provide us with hundreds of stations. And the economics of that is somewhat complicated, because I think people who don’t watch the Tucker Carlson show don’t realize that, regardless, they’re still paying for Tucker Carlson’s salary.
And what I mean to say by that is that when we purchase a cable package from our provider—whether we have a satellite service; or a cable service, like Comcast; or a fiber service, like Fios by Verizon—we pay a lump sum for a large package of channels. And that money gets distributed to those channels via what’s called carriage fees.
And for Fox News and Fox Television, that is the bulk of their income; last year, they made about $1.6 billion from carriage fees. These are negotiated deals with their cable carriers that we all pay as part of our monthly bill, those of us who are still on cable and satellite pay-TV services, which is the bulk of American viewers. And so it’s a lot of money that we’re paying, an average about $1.72 a month per person that goes to Fox News, even if we don’t like that.
So when I say Tucker Carlson’s racism is paid for by all of us, that’s in fact true. And a lot of people don’t really think about that; they don’t think about the implications of carriage fees, and how—unless we change that system—we’re all complicit in some way in supporting this sort of racism.
JJ: I think folks would like to know, on hearing that, how can we stop it? And it’s not a new idea to try to stop it. I mean, we’ve been back and forth on this for a while. FAIR’s Peter Hart wrote about responses to this in 2010, and he was reminding folks that when NewsCorp launched in 1996, they couldn’t charge for Fox News, they had to pay their way onto cable. It was only as they got more political influence, more audience, that they were able to charge—and then triple—these carriage fees that you’re talking about.
And I just want to throw in there one thing that Peter wrote about: Then he was saying, “Why do we have to pay Sean Hannity’s salary?”
TK: Right.
JJ: Same conversation, just a different person. But he noted then–Fox head Rupert Murdoch’s boast that he could name his price with cable operators: “Cancel us, you might get your house burnt down”; that was how Rupert Murdoch described his negotiating strategy.
So all of that just to say, this is not a brand new battlefield. But what are the ideas we’re looking at now to undo this thing where we’re paying for shows that we not only don’t want, but that we really, really don’t want?
TK: There are a couple of ways to address this. And some of the things that people have heard about are these advertiser boycotts that have happened in the past, whenever Tucker Carlson says something inflammatory. There are a lot of good organizations, like Sleeping Giants and others, who’ve mobilized advertiser boycotts, and that has harmed them a little bit. But again, it’s only a smaller piece of the larger pie of income.
So if you really want to look at the problem of carriage fees, and address that, there’s a few things you can do: No. 1, we need to embolden these cable carriers—the cable companies like Comcast and Verizon and AT&T and Spectrum—to be a little more bold, to be a little more forthright in their negotiations with Fox News. If, indeed, the majority of their customers don’t watch Fox News, which is true, why do they feel obligated to pay such high carriage fees? So there is a public pressure campaign that can be very effective.
Another thing that can be done is to promote or advocate for à la carte, which is a cable subscription that allows each viewer to handpick the channels that they want to watch. There is a package of what are called “must-carry channels” that include local television stations; the PEG stations that might cover, say, the local city council hearings; and some public broadcasting stations—but in addition to that, consumers should just be able to handpick, like you would pick from a dim sum menu, perhaps, the stations that you want, and then pay accordingly. There have been a lot of legal hurdles that have been put in place for that à la carte option.
And another thing that people are doing increasingly is called “cutting the cord.” Cutting the cord means that you take pay-TV services out of your triple play, the package that you buy from a company like Comcast, and you get all of your television “over the top,” via your high-speed internet connection. You then have the opportunity to subscribe to services like Hulu or Netflix, and reassemble your own television experience. There’s still only a small percentage of Americans who’ve chosen the over-the-top, cutting-the-cord option.
So it’s kind of complicated. There are a lot of things that can be done. What we really need to do is mobilize people and educate people who don’t want to pay Tucker Carlson’s salary that there are things that they can do.
JJ: One of the things that you point out in the piece is that, when folks are talking about this, it might be presented as, “Why would you intervene with this radical strategy?” It’s actually…the à la carte idea is something that happens already in other spheres, like stock trading, right?
Tim Karr: “Policies that have been put in place…take choice out of the hands of consumers—whether it’s choice for an internet connection, whether it’s a choice for the type of cable stations that you subscribe to—and they put them in the hands of these large companies.”
TK: That’s right. If you choose mutual funds, you can choose funds that are socially responsible, that, for example, don’t invest in energy extraction companies. Those are all choices that consumers make. And so it’s a little bit backwards. As you know as someone who’s followed media policy for quite some time, a lot of the policies that have been put in place seem really backward; they take choice out of the hands of consumers—whether it’s choice for an internet connection, whether it’s a choice for the type of cable stations that you subscribe to—and they put them in the hands of these large companies, who have far too much control over the ways that we connect and communicate.
So this has been a lifelong effort for me. And the work that we do at Free Press is to try to put the public back into these policy conversations, to make sure that we have control over our media experience.
JJ: Let me just ask you, finally, when we were talking about à la carte back in 2010, 2012, one of the things that was part of the conversation was that if you’re in a system where you pick what channels you want—despite what you’re talking about, the must-carry that might include local government and PEG channels—that that might sideline, or make invisible, some smaller or niche channels that might only get out there as part of a package.
TK: Yes.
JJ: And I’m wondering, have we thought about new ways to address that part?
TK: That’s a real concern, because there are a lot of niche stations that cover immigrant communities, that cater to other audiences that rely upon “the bundle” in order to reach, potentially reach, a large audience. And so there are ways that you can manage that, too. There are these ideas about “skinny bundles,” where you actually create these kinds of packages that have a lot of public interest and diverse options in them. But when it comes to the premium stations, and some of the controversial stations like Fox News, they leave that up to the viewer.
One of the things that I’ve advocated for is a hate-free bundle: a bundle where people can pay a fairly standard subscription rate, minus the money that would go to Fox Television, for Fox News, for Fox Business News, for all of the Fox channels; minus the money that might go to One America News Network, or Newsmax, or any of the stations that have been spreading disinformation about the elections, about the Covid response, and fanning the flames of racism.
So that’s potentially something that could happen. We need to gain some momentum in the organizing side to pressure cable companies to do that. I think that getting Congress and the FCC involved could also help persuade them to give these options to consumers.
JJ: And we also are in, finally, an era where it is different than 10, 12 years ago, and I think media consumers are a little more accustomed to proactively seeking out sources that they might not see, and talking to one another about what might be interesting, and sharing in social media around big news outlets. That’s how podcasts get out there.
So I think public education, I just would say, would also be a big way of directing folks’ attention to programming that they might miss if it can’t get [to be] part of one of these bundling things.
TK: And I think, longer term, we also just need to have a reckoning with how we ended up with the media system that we have, where these commercial media outlets—in this case, it’s cable companies colluding with Fox News Channel to push white supremacist content.
I mean, there’s a long history of media being used to victimize impacted communities, Black and brown communities, and we need to reckon with that as well, and to see that a lot of the controversy around carriage fees is rooted in a history of discrimination.
JJ: We’ve been speaking with Tim Karr from Free Press; they’re online at Free Press.net. Thank you so much, Tim Karr, for speaking with us this week on CounterSpin.
TK: My pleasure.
Somebody from the Free Press wants to prevent another person from speaking (at least on a large platform). You have to love the irony. They both admit that there’s a large audience. Obviously, millions of people agree with him. You don’t hear conservatives asking for Rachel’s removal. Why is it that the party of tolerance cannot tolerate opposing views? When a Mexican illegally crosses our border, does that not diminish our vote? Is that untrue? Democrats are on the side of counting illegal aliens in the census for representatives. If a heavily illegal alien (10s of millions) state picked up more representatives, they are stealing a representative from another state.
To Janet,
You said:
“If a heavily illegal alien (10s of millions) state picked up more representatives, they are stealing a representative from another state.”
Are you bragging or berating, I can’t tell?
Both Texas and Florida are Republican run states and both number 2 & 3, for being most populated with undocumented migrants (California is at the top.)
After the 2020 census Texas gained 2 seats, Florida gained 1, and California lost one congressional seat.
This nonsense about “stolen seats” is nonsense. Stolen from who?
If, as you claim, these are instances of “congressional seat theft,” it doesn’t surprise me, the scumbags running things in the GOP, and the sick, twisted politics that passes for “right wing” in the U.S. is so blatantly corrupt, weird and hypocritical.
Both Florida and Texas are “red” states, and are thieves according to your own logic…
OK. Then they are stealing votes from Democrats. Wrong is wrong.
Hello Janet,
Who said anything about: “…wants to prevent another person from speaking (at least on a large platform).” ???
Can you quote a passage from this interview where anyone said anything about silencing someone else?
Maybe you are saying this?
If people had the choice of opting out of carrying Fox News on their cable package, there would be so many who would drop Fox, that it would be equivalent to “silencing” Fox News? That’s what it sounds like you are saying….wow, this means even you (at some subconscious level) know that Fox sucks….bah ha ha ha!!!
Fox alone has 15M viewers for their top shows. CNN 8.6, MSNBC 6.5. You probably were making a point, but it got lost in the facts.
Janet,
The point I made was that you always are projecting nonsense into these FAIR articles that doesn’t exist. I even gave literal proof of that in one of my replies to you below.
Here, I’ll whittle the my entire point down for you since you are stellar at sticking to the facts of your own choosing:
How in the world do you see a and b to being equal and identical?
a. people having the choice of not carrying and paying for cable news
b. silencing Tucker
Now do you see? Do you see now, how what you wrote in your original and subsequent posts was nonsense?
Agree on pretty much all you said. Free press is free press, and if you don’t agree with it, don’t listen to it, or cut the cord or go ala cart with the choice of channels. Those are reasonable things to do. “Mobilizing” people for “advertiser boycotts” shows intolerance that free speech is designed to defeat.
Also not sure where the accusations of racism are coming from. Don’t know about this Tucker character specifically, maybe he is a racist, maybe he is not. But just from looking at the quotes: if someone is against illegal immigrants, it does not automatically make him racist. It does not matter if the majority of the said illegals are of some or other ethnicity or race. This is a strawman’s argument, and kind of obvious at that.
It’s difficult to take this seriously since he doesn’t cite examples of equally terrible/lying/vitriolic personalities from “the left” such as Joy Reid or Rachel Maddow, and all the warmongering ex intelligence officers infesting MSNBC.
As written it comes off as a completely partisan and biased endeavor, even if the principles and methods are sound.
Preaching to the choir is boring and unproductive. Please try making your views seem more objective than subjective.
Corn pipe,
Yeah, yeah, yeah….Karr used Carlson as an example, the more salient point to Karr’s position that you might have missed; the monopolistic way in which media giants compel its customers to pay for all of these partisan clowns salaries, because it’s an intrinsic part of the monopolistic way these media giants operate.
My point is that whatever salient points he has are lost due to his partisanship and biases. Including examples of all the spectrum of ideology, not just right-wing FOX news, would make it clear that he isn’t just a fairweather partisan hypocrite. Such as can be found on hm….MSNBC and CNN in addition to FOX.
“these media giants”
What media giants? He mentions Fox Fox Fox Fox Fox Fox Fox Fox Fox Fox, ten times. No mention of any left-liberal examples. This is either a failure of messaging or an indication of his bias.
I didn’t miss anything. Eager conservatives seeking out truth who happen upon this might miss though, seeing as how they might recognize the inherent bias and partisanship of the author and so dismiss it.
What sort of audience is this guy trying to reach??
Cornpipe,
I’m just spitballing here, but my guess is the piece was purposefully, and intentionally being biased. Why are you splitting hairs about being biased toward a racist, anti-vaxx, piece of shit like Carlson? Oh waah, because they didn’t throw in Maddow too?
Sounds like you ought to start your own media watchdog group there cornboy.
I see no problem with being politically biased or otherwise against an obfuscated and unfair system of putting cable users on the hook for the paycheck of a known racist ghoul—so what if Tucker is one of a dozen or so others on cable who are just as culpable for malfeasance?
You are either making a contradictory statement like:
‘No intentionally biased critique of the corrupt way cable companies forces its consumers to pay for Tucker Carlson, is being truly unbiased if it leaves out the neoliberal, Imperialist, war mongering pundits from the other networks.’
What?
Or are you are saying the following other nonsensical tripe:
‘No contributor of a media watchdog site claiming to hold media to a higher standard of Fair Accurate rhetoric In Reporting, can legitimately critique the way cable company billing works and only Tucker Carlson at the same time.’
Again…what? Says who?
Why can’t a critique of the way cable companies work just focus on one of the pieces of shit on cable? I still don’t see your point. And fuck anyone who calls themself a “conservative,” whilst claiming to seek out truth….Empirical reality could care less about what brand of hypocrite one fancies themselves.
If you don’t see my point now, you never will.
I’m hardly conservative btw. Conservatives are Tucker, Trump, Maddow, Obama, Clinton, Biden, Bush, Pelosi, McConnell, basically every single media personality and almost all politicians. They’re almost all warmongering, homophobic, racist, corporatist American Supremacists and the universe would be better off without them.
But yes, I would like Fairness from Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. For its own sake due to its purported goals, but also people [listeners, readers] tend to take objectivity more seriously than subjectivity, if being lectured to.
If you’re going to talk about the evils of something to do with baseball, and you spend all your time shitting on the Mets as an example of the problem, don’t be shocked if Mets fans ignore the topic of the evil thing and instead simply ignore you because of your obvious bias. They might think “why is this jerk not also pointing out that this also applies to the hated Yankees”?
They might even start agreeing with the evil baseball thing that’s happening, out of spite. Or even out of logic. “If this jerk Yankees fan, who keeps shitting on the Mets, says A is good, then maybe it’s just a way to help the Yankees and further screw over the Mets. I’ll just advocate for not-A instead.”
The fact that they only brought up removing Tucker is just a ploy to get him deplatformed. If the article was truly on an a la carte style of programming, then I would have stayed quiet. Are you really that naïve or purposely acting stupid?
Yes, you would drop Fox, I would drop ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and PBS. What your side is getting to, is two different sets of everything. Just two different types of people living next to each other, despising each other, and shopping at two different types of companies. Your side disgusts me. There is NO discussion on the right of this type of thing.
Too Janet,
“Your side disgusts me.” Oh yeah? Which side is that?
Also, I noticed how you didn’t post a single quote from the interview where either Janine or Tim advocated for “silencing” or having Tucker Carlson “deplatformed.”
Could it be that all of that disgust you have was projected into what they were talking about, and you missed the fundamental point they were getting at?
Janet,
You said: “The fact that they only brought up removing Tucker…” they didn’t bring that up, you are straight up lying now. No one said Tucker should be “silenced,” “removed,” or “deplatformed,” that’s you hearing, seeing and reading something that is simply not there.
Karr was saying that people should have the option of dropping partisan channels versus the system as is – one where media cartels force partisan crap on people who just want a few more stations than their local trash.
My position, is that ALL of this crap needs to be unplugged…the Internet, the cable TV, the Satellite TV, the cellphones…let’s go back to actually talking to each other…we’d keep the CB radios and the HAM radios.
In my hypothetical “back to reality” utopia, all this new digital media noise goes away…the world will get along just fine without all this.
They are interested in not paying for Tucker not due to some economic reason. It is purely to punish and hopefully silence a conservative. Name one name or organization that was left leaning that they wanted to not pay for (effectively deplatforming). They only brought up not paying for conservative media. If they were interested in their pocketbooks, they wouldn’t have brought up the fictitious racism. They would have brought up not wanting to pay for: cooking, history, whatever. They are partisans through and through. Don’t be naive into thinking this was about their pocketbook.
To accuse somebody of lying is pretty egregious. Why be an ass?
FWIW, I agree with you from the second paragraph down.
Yeah, genius let’s get rid of the only MSM platform available to Glenn Greenwald, Jimmy Dore and other anti-imperialists and the only show that would allow presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard to address the nation with her call to end war and intervention.
By now it has become frighteningly obvious that the warnings of Malcolm X, Phil Ochs and others that liberals are the most deeply entrenched – and effective – obstacle to the struggle against the ruling class and to ending the reign of the military security state are unassailaible. The moralizing hysteria emanting from SJWs may be more reminiscent of 17th century Puritans than the zeitgeist of the Enlightenment in which they vainly see themselves. But because of their intellectual weakness and deep disposition to conformity, ultimately liberals are losers.
Democracy Now? Greenwald, at the very least, has been on there several times over the years. Nice try, though. And as far as their appearances: they’re pretty much saying what Carlson loves to hear. Otherwise, their collective asses would’ve been bounced out of there faster than you can say “Conservatives and truth-seeking are oxymorons.”
Democracy Now may not qualify to many as “mainstream”, but the truth is, you don’t need mainstream to get those ideas across. And again, bashing the Democratic party by painting it as this homogeneous entity feeds right into the Fox narrative. And in the end, willfully lying about a public health crisis should result in consequences to the network. Divesting is a way to do it.
For supposedly FAIR reporting, you certainly do slant your attacks against conservative news and commentary. With a 50/50 populace, there are nearly as many people who dislike paying the carriage fees for bias shows from CNN, ABC, and MSNBC as there are people who don’t watch the Fox commentators.
Probably should be promoting how to make sure the streaming services like HULU, SLING TV, ROKU etc provide the option for ALA CARTE as well as bundled packaging and let the consumer decide how and what to pay for.