Even stars are expendable

Tucker Carlson, one of the most popular television personalities on Fox News, lost his job this week, to the cheers of liberals and to the tears of conservatives.

But then Don Lemon, a liberal talk show host on CNN, was fired, too. That news softened the blow for conservatives who like to scream about the “liberal media” (a phrase about as false as the election fraud claims) and irritated liberals who like hearing Don attack conservatives on his weeknight show.

I’ve never seen either program, except for a few clips on YouTube. Those shows don’t interest me, because they are obviously not news programs; nor are they entertainment shows. It’s a curious blend that I find dangerous. It’s so easy to confuse the opinions of a talk show host with actual analysis or news. And TV is a powerful, popular medium. It’s a real issue.

But Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon are not the first controversial broadcast stars. Even Rush Limbaugh was not groundbreaking. The media has had divisive political stars as far back as Father Coughlin, who preached fascist politics to an adoring audience of millions back during the Depression. He, too, fell from grace after setting ratings records across the country.

I suspect the Tucker firing had to do with the recent court settlement. Dominion Voting Systems sued Fox News for slander and defamation after Fox continued to push the “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was stolen. I suspect, as part of the settlement, Fox agreed to fire Tucker Carlson. Collateral damage, they call it, even though Tucker’s show was very profitable for the network. Just not profitable enough to justify any more $787 million settlements.

To me, this means that no one star is bigger than the organization. I like to think, for example, that people would drop their subscriptions like hotcakes if I ever stopped writing “Harry’s Gang” every week, or if Steve Korby quit producing his stories. That’s how people with enormous egos like us tend to view the world. But I stopped for 10 months last year while I ran for office; and Steve took a lengthy break while recovering from a health episode. The Pine Knot’s subscriptions actually grew during this time. We’re not as valuable as we like to think we are.

When I was a kid, the Duluth paper shuffled around its comics section, dropping some strips and adding others, and moved Doonesbury to the editorial page. For months, people sent letters to the editor claiming they were canceling their subscriptions because of the changes. That was 40 years ago and the paper is still around.

For years, I respected Fox News, as I found their reporting was consistent with journalistic standards of reporting the facts without a political twist or bias, and that facts were verified before being broadcast. The opinion shows (which make up most of the programming at these cable news channels) certainly leaned strongly to the right, but the actual news reporting was reliable. Over the years, that shifted and now the news division is not quite as reliable. Losing that credibility is what will cause the downfall of cable news channels, not the loss of its biggest stars.

Let’s apply this analysis to your community newspaper, the Pine Knot News. Our strength is local reporting (“hyperlocal” — as editor and boss Jana Peterson likes to call it) that is accurate, reliable and meets journalistic standards. You don’t see buzzwords creep into news stories at the Pine Knot, because such writing diminishes the integrity of the newspaper. As a result, you can trust the news you read in the Pine Knot News, whether you are liberal, conservative, or ambivalent.

If we ever lose that credibility, we’re doomed. And while we have great opinion page columnists and letters to the editor, we’ll never allow bias to seep into our news stories. Not only that, but our newspaper makes efforts to ensure readers understand that those of us who write columns are not allowed to influence the direction of the news reporting. It’s how successful news organizations have operated since the beginning. So, even with the loss of one of our great and popular columnists, the paper would live on.

Pete Radosevich is the publisher of the Pine Knot News community newspaper and an attorney in Esko who hosts the cable access talk show Harry’s Gang on CAT-7. His opinions are his own. Contact him at [email protected].