WATCH: Tucker Carlson forced to apologize for Georgia voter fraud lie
Pollemix News – November 15, 2020
Fox News host Tucker Carlson was forced to issue an apology for a false story claiming that a deceased individual James Blalock, who died in 2006, had cast a vote for Joe Biden in the 2020 Presidential election. On his Thursday night show, Carlson made Blalock a focal point for a story alleging that Democrats had engaged in systematic voter fraud by casting ballots in the name of deceased registered voters within the state of Georgia. Carlson said:
“No one quite embodies that story like James Blalock of Covington, Ga. Mr. Blalock was a mailman for 33 years, until he passed away in 2006,” Carlson said in his Thursday broadcast. “Fourteen years later, according to state records, he was still mailing things. James Blalock cast a ballot in last week’s election.”
Less than 24 hours later Carlson’s falsehood was exposed by both Newton County officials, who explained that the vote was cast by the widow of James E Blalock who was registered as Mrs James E Blalock, and local news affiliate 11Alive who interviewed Mrs Blalock directly to confirm that the vote was fairly cast.
Carlson gave a tepid apology on his Friday show, that was apparently cooerced by Fox News management, but failed to also issue a correction for another false accusation that a dead woman by the name of Linda Kessler had also cast a ballot for Biden which was likewise proven to be fraudulent as the person who had voted was “Lynda” Kessler who had a different address to the deceased “Linda” Kessler. The easily exposed hoaxes presented call into question whether the show is suffering from poor fact checking and journalistic rigor or whether Carlson sought to deliberately misrepresent and mislead his viewers. What will be concerning to fans of Tucker, however, is that he was forced to apologize by management who have generally given the host a wide berth and stood by him through several controversies and ad boycotts yet were quick to reprimand him for his latest faux pas. It seems apparent that in the post-Trump era Fox has made an executive decision to veer away from inaccurate “opinion” in order to bolster their News bona fides, a move that is likely to pour fire on the internal civil war within the network and may alienate their most watched hosts including Tucker, Hannity and Laura Ingraham.
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