Tucker Carlson: ‘We are the publication’ that won’t criticize Fox News

Carlson’s very direct admission came two weeks after Mickey Kaus, a columnist at the Caller, resigned because Carlson declined to publish a blog post that was critical of Fox. The decision led other media writers to charge the Caller with harboring biases and lacking independence.

“We are the publication — and I run it — that spiked a column critical of Fox News,” Carlson said in an interview with Carl Cannon of RealClearPolitics. He said he operates his newsroom under the rules that staff cannot write critically of each other’s family members and they cannot write negatively about Fox.

Carlson is a weekend morning anchor of Fox’s “Fox and Friends” show.

But Carlson said what makes the Daily Caller unusual is not its conflicts – staffers at virtually all Washington publications have personal relationships with others in media and politics – but its straightforward management of those complexities.

“I had a couple of my employees say, ‘Well, isn’t that a conflict,'” Carlson said. “To which I said, ‘Yes, it’s a conflict.’ It’s a conflict that I, as the owner of the Daily Caller — my business partner and I own it — and I’m an employee of Fox. That’s a conflicted situation. But I don’t know what to do about it.”

Carlson said his goal is to be “direct” with his staff and he accomplishes it in part by not hiding his reasons for declining to be critical of Fox — contrasting that decision with experiences he has had at other publications.

“I have seen many conflicts where my editor was not direct with me about it,” he told Cannon. “Where the piece would massaged or edited or ‘We’re just gonna hold it for a little while,’ and it turned out later that I had criticized some personal friend of the owner. But nobody was ever direct with me about it. I’m direct about it.”

Carlson admitted there is a perception that it’s “unfair” but said, “unlike everyone else, I’m not a bulls—-er.”