This reporting appears as one of several scoops featured in this week’s edition of Confider, the newsletter pulling back the curtain on the media. Subscribe here and send your questions, tips, and complaints here.
Regardless of whether it actually had to do anything with Tucker Carlson, MSNBC’s abrupt firing of Tiffany Cross sure has network staffers, as well as media observers and journalists, fretting that the ouster is an unequivocal victory for the far-right Fox News host.
Carlson recently bashed Cross on his primetime show, personally targeting her by accusing the weekend host, who is Black, of fomenting a Rwandan-style “race war.”
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Multiple staffers called the sudden ouster “fucked up,” with one NBC staffer telling Confider: “Whether we did this because of him or not, and I doubt we did, he’ll take this as a win and do more stuff like it.”
MSNBC initially declined to comment on the ouster, though a source familiar claimed Cross was let go because she failed to meet editorial standards with a series of incendiary remarks—and that management had given her several warnings to that effect. Just a day prior, Cross had appeared on Charlamagne tha God’s Comedy Central show and called Florida the “dick of the country” while saying we should “castrate” it.
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Other NBC employees who spoke with Confider agreed that regardless of whether the network actually kowtowed to Carlson and his supporters, the timing made matters worse.
“This definitely could’ve been handled better, or at least done in a more normal way where it didn’t feel like a reaction to an ongoing harassment campaign,” one staffer said. Another NBC staffer emphasized that the network has been “pretty good about protecting employees attacked by Tucker,” so Cross’ exit was more than likely a business decision.
Nevertheless, the firing has been roundly criticized by celebrities, progressive commentators, and journalists, many of whom have directly linked Cross’ ouster to Carlson very publicly accusing her of white genocide.
Pulitzer-winning journo Wesley Lowery, for instance, tweeted that the network canceling its top-rated weekend show during Carlson’s “bad faith harassment campaign… is a much bigger story than current level of coverage suggests.”
Cross, for her part, released a statement over the weekend saying she was “disheartened” by MSNBC’s decision, adding that, “Fresh off the heels of a ‘racial reckoning,’ as many have called it, we see that with progress there is always backlash.”
An MSNBC spokesperson told Confider that the Cross cancellation was merely a mundane programming decision.
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