Tucker Carlson Tonight was the most-watched cable news show of 2021, yet the program’s namesake host spent Monday night decrying an alleged lack of diversity in the same media ecosystem that his employer, Fox News, dominates.
In a segment about President Joe Biden’s low approval ratings and the recent obstacles to his agenda, Carlson took the opportunity to play news clips of pundits and reporters offering pessimistic takes on the administration. This was part of a trend, he figured, as it aligned with how some of them expressed joy at Biden’s 2020 election win, and also how some described the Jan. 6 insurrection as “one of the darkest days” in U.S. history.
“Everyone in the Democratic Party sounds exactly alike because message discipline is what they do. It’s who they are,” Carlson complained. “No one in the party thinks independently—that’s not allowed. Everybody in the group must say the same thing in concert with everybody else in the group all the time. Think for yourself, even for a second, and you are denounced as a conspiracy theorist.”
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Carlson, who has pushed conspiracy theories about the events of Jan. 6, wanted to make clear that he wasn’t alleging a full-on “conspiracy,” but more likely a “conspiracy of instinct.”
“For all the talk you hear of diversity, there is precisely zero diversity in our national media,” Carlson declared without a shred of self-awareness. “People may have different skin tones or different sexual interests, [but that’s] not relevant. They are all from such similar backgrounds with such similar beliefs and values and life experiences that their gut reactions to everything have aligned into perfect synchronicity, like menstruating teenagers at summer camp.”
That Carlson opted not to play clips from talking heads on Fox News is no surprise, as the fact that the network’s programming is consumed in millions of homes nationwide undercuts his claim.
For instance, Carlson’s show drew the most viewers of any cable news show last year, averaging 3.21 million each night. It led the field in the coveted 25-54 age group, too, with a nightly audience of about 535,000.
Additionally, the top three most watched shows of 2021 all belong to Fox News, and of the top 10, the network broadcasts seven.
