Fox News is going out of its way to defend Tucker Carlson as criticism grows over his promotion of white supremacist rhetoric

• Fox News' media show host defended Tucker Carlson following the Buffalo mass shooting last week.
• It's the latest example of Fox taking an approach to defend Carlson by name, not just the network.

Fox News weekend host Howard Kurtz dedicated a segment on his Sunday show to defending colleague Tucker Carlson, marking the latest example of the network taking a top-down approach to backing its primetime star.

Carlson, the face of the nation's most viewed cable news show, is again facing backlash and the heightened attention he's become accustomed to, this time following the May 14 Buffalo mass shooting and his well-documented echoing of white supremacist rhetoric and adjacent conspiracy theories, including the shooting suspect's self-professed embrace of the "great replacement" theory.

"Now his comments on immigration and politics and those of anyone at this network are, of course, fair game for public debate," Kurtz said, with Mediaite first cataloging the segment. "But blaming him for the shooting is absurd. The latest case of a blood on your hands approach to finger pointing."

Kurtz, who joined Fox News in 2013 after hosting "Reliable Sources" for CNN, dismissed comparisons to the suspect's online writings with Carlson's on-air rhetoric as "knee-jerk partisanship." He also compared Carlson to the late conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, falsely asserting that former President Bill Clinton blamed Limbaugh "in part" for the Oklahoma City bombing (Clinton only referred to "promoters of paranoia" and did not mention Limbaugh by name).

As have other Fox personalities, Kurtz also mentioned that Carlson was not mentioned by name in the manifesto.

The New York Times recently analyzed 1,150 episodes of "Tucker Carlson Tonight." Its assessment included an April 2021 segment where Carlson closely mirrored the racist theory and baselessly alleged that Democrats and the nation's elites have been intentionally bringing in "more obedient voters from the third world" to "replace" the current US electorate, which was 70.9% white in 2020.

Despite several ad boycotts and PR headaches for the network following a range of Carlson controversies, he has proven too big to cancel with his pace-setting ratings as one of the only hosts attracting three to four million viewers per night.

In the Roger Ailes era at Fox, it was relatively common for hosts to take an extended break following on-air controversies. Former Fox News host Glenn Beck went off-air several times after landing himself in hot water — though the network would announce the absences as vacations and not suspensions — such as after he called former President Barack Obama "racist" and someone with "a deep-seated hatred for white people."

"Half the headlines say he's been canceled," Ailes said upon the news of Beck's departure in April 2011. "The other half say he quit. We're pretty happy with both of them."

Ailes occasionally demonstrated more of an iron fist when dealing with employees before he was ousted in 2016 amid allegations of serial sexual harassment in the workplace. Current CEO Suzanne Scott has taken a different approach, according to an anchor at the network who spoke on the condition of anonymity for the book "Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth" by Brian Stelter.

Rather than deploy the occasional pre-planned vacation when a host generated controversy, Scott gave the network's top-viewed hosts more autonomy, according to the frustrated host.

"That's what she prefers," the anonymous Fox anchor said of Scott. "She believes 'programming' is what works."

Scott gave an interview to The Hollywood Reporter in October 2021 where she discussed her management style.

"I have a regular cadence of conversations with a wide variety of talent here, including our primetime talent," she said. "I will never discuss those conversations. That's not who I am. I am loyal first. I am loyal to everyone on the team, whether they are someone on the news side or the opinion side. To me, they are all people who work for Fox News Media, and I respect the privacy of those conversations."

The same dynamic of giving the hosts more freedom has gone for Lachlan Murdoch, CEO of the Fox Corporation, according to longtime "Fox & Friends" co-host Brian Kilmeade, who also has a weekend show at the network along with streaming ventures such as the history program "What Made America Great."

"I've had more interaction with him than I had with Roger Ailes in twenty years," Kilmeade said of Murdoch in a podcast interview. "I've never felt more autonomy than I do right now."

Matthew Gertz, a senior fellow for left-leaning Media Matters for America and a longtime Fox News expert, explained that Carlson has cemented his status at the network as other high profile but less ideological hosts have since departed.

"Fox News is not subtle about how the network prioritizes Tucker Carlson's white nationalist propaganda," Gertz told Insider. "The staff knows that Lachlan Murdoch gave Carlson the green light to promote these blood-soaked conspiracy theories. Anyone who wasn't comfortable with that has already left."

Carlson enjoys even more leeway thanks to his work that exists behind a paywall on the FOX Nation streaming app. There, he doesn't face the same risks about ads being pulled and has waded further into conspiracy theories such as the January 6 insurrection being a "false flag" operation orchestrated by the US government.

While Kurtz spent most of Sunday's monologue defending Carlson specifically, he also mentioned the network and bemoaned how Fox became the subject of criticism specifically because 11 of the 13 victims were Black. Ten people were killed at the Buffalo supermarket on May 14.

"Yet, after mostly Black shoppers were gunned down in that Buffalo supermarket, people who don't like this network or compete with this network unleashed this constant barrage: it's partially Fox's fault," Kurtz said, referring to the criticism.