“Sometimes we create monsters…”

TV news anchors gone astray

Photo by Brad Weaver on Unsplash

I was fortunate to work with many talented, smart, well-adjusted news anchors throughout my career in TV news. By far, the vast majority were in it for the right reasons, did their homework, had their heads screwed on straight and with egos in check.

But…every now and then, an anchor would get too big for their britches. They’d start to read their own reviews, become infatuated with being recognized in the grocery store, and become demanding and difficult to manage. I had a boss who would say, “Sometimes we create monsters.”  We tell them how talented they are, we pay them a lot of money, we create promos telling viewers how great that anchor is, and then we as managers would somehow be surprised when they turned into divas.

That’s clearly what happened this week with the sudden dismissals of Tucker Carlson at Fox “News” and Don Lemon at CNN.

It appears Carlson thought he was too big to fire. He had the highest ratings at Fox. Presidents would take his phone calls (well, one president, anyway.)  He could make or break an aspiring Republican politician. He made an obscene amount of money, reported to be around $20 million a year.

Tucker Carlson was a time bomb waiting to go off. Excellent reporting by the New York Times and others showed how he stoked racism on his program, how he skewed the facts to excuse away the January 6^th riots, how he fanned the flames of election denialism even when he didn’t believe in any of it.

None of that was what got him fired. As a few days have gone by since Monday’s firing, we now know that Fox executives simply decided that Tucker had gotten too big for his britches. Text messages he wrote that were redacted out of those released in the Dominion lawsuit show Carlson excoriating his bosses with vile language. A female producer sued Fox because she says Carlson created a hostile work environment for women. In other words, he had become a monster. Yes, a monster created by Fox, but a monster nonetheless. The Murdochs have slain monsters before – like Bill O’Reilly and Roger Ailes. Taking out Carlson saves them a lot of future headaches, as well as sending a strong message to all the other monsters-in-training at Fox.

The events of this week reminded me of how prescient Jon Stewart was back in 2006 when he took on Carlson directly. At the time, Carlson was on an afternoon CNN program called Crossfire, where he and liberal Democrat Paul Begala would loudly debate politics in front of a studio audience. Stewart, at the time, anchored Comedy Central’s The Daily Show. He went on Crossfire and told Carlson and Begala to “Stop. You are hurting the country.”  Carlson tried to out-wise guy Stewart, but it didn’t go too well. Never try to out-sass a stand-up comic from Jersey, especially a sharp one like Stewart. It’s worth watching and remembering that Jon Stewart put up a big red flag about Carlson 17 years ago.  It’s also tremendously satisfying watching Stewart skillfully dismember Carlson’s smug persona.

As for Don Lemon being ousted at CNN, I’ve got to think there’s more to the story than just the idiotic comment he made about Nikki Haley. As you know, he said “Nikki Haley isn’t in her prime. Sorry, when is a woman considered to be in her prime? In her twenties and thirties, maybe forties.” And he made the remark to his two female co-anchors, who looked stunned.

Long-time anchors don’t get fired because they made one dumb comment. He apologized to his co-anchors and viewers, but some interview subjects were declining to appear on the program if Lemon was there. The ratings on CNN’s new morning program were not good. None of that seems like a fire-able offense to me. Lemon had been at CNN a long time. He’d been popular in primetime. Given the strong reaction to his statement, CNN bosses could have disciplined him, demoted him, or moved him back to primetime. Instead, they let him anchor Monday morning, then axed him as he walked off the set. That suddenness tells me things had gotten bad, that he somehow wasn’t getting the message. I predict more information will leak out in the coming weeks about Lemon, then we can all judge whether he’d become an anchor monster or not. At this point, it’s too soon to tell.

There are a lot of credible, talented anchors out there. I really trust people like Dana Bash and Anderson Cooper on CNN, Stephanie Ruhle and Hallie Jackson on MSNBC, and Lester Holt on NBC Nightly News. They ooze credibility. I served on a national board with Jane Pauley from CBS Sunday Morning, and you’ll never find a more genuine, down-to-earth person. I know plenty of local news people who are outstanding anchors and just as decent off camera as they appear to be on camera. They understand their role, they deal with the pressures of a high-profile life, but they also realize it’s about the story, it’s not about them. The anchor job CAN be done without becoming a monster.

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Please check out some of the other writers in the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, formed as a response to the decline in editorial voices at local newspapers.

Laura Belin: Iowa Politics with Laura Belin, Windsor Heights

Doug Burns: The Iowa Mercury, Carroll

Dave Busiek: Dave Busiek on Media, Des Moines

Art Cullen: Art Cullen’s Notebook, Storm Lake

Suzanna de Baca Dispatches from the Heartland, Huxley

Debra Engle: A Whole New World, Madison County

Julie Gammack: Julie Gammack’s Iowa Potluck, Des Moines and Okoboji

Joe Geha: Fern and Joe, Ames

Jody Gifford: Benign Inspiration, West Des Moines

Nik Heftman, The Seven Times, Los Angeles and Iowa

Beth Hoffman: In the Dirt, Lovilla

Dana James: New Black Iowa, Des Moines

Pat Kinney: View from Cedar Valley, Waterloo

Fern Kupfer: Fern and Joe, Ames

Robert Leonard: Deep Midwest: Politics and Culture, Bussey

Tar Macias: Hola Iowa, Iowa

Kurt Meyer, Showing Up, St. Ansgar

Kyle Munson, Kyle Munson’s Main Street, Des Moines

Jane Nguyen, The Asian Iowan, West Des Moines

John Naughton: My Life, in Color, Des Moines

Chuck Offenburger: Iowa Boy Chuck Offenburger, Jefferson and Des Moines

Barry Piatt: Piatt on Politics: Behind the Curtains, Washington, D.C.

Macey Spensley, The Midwest Creative, Davenport and Des Moines

Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Buggy Land, Kalona

Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Emerging Voices, Kalona

Cheryl Tevis: Unfinished Business, Boone County

Ed Tibbetts: Along the Mississippi, Davenport

Teresa Zilk: Talking Good, Des Moines

And thanks to Iowa Capital Dispatch, which runs some of our columns in its commentary section.