When the Russian invasion of Ukraine occurred in February 2022, the Western world and mainstream media universally condemned it. Shortly after, the Biden administration began funding the Ukrainian war efforts and the American taxpayer continues to fund the war. Yet, there were some in the media, like Tucker Carlson, who questioned U.S. involvement in Ukraine. Now the former Fox News anchor is planning to interview Putin in the Kremlin and he has faced widespread condemnation in the media.
After Carlson announced the interview on February 6, 2024, before the interview aired, Carlson released a short segment in which he explained his reasons for wanting to interview Putin. He stated the reasons why: “First, it’s our job; we’re in journalism. Our duty is to inform people,” referring to the fact that most Americans aren’t informed about the war.
The mainstream media indicted Carlson over what it perceived as a treasonous betrayal, even before the interview aired.
Inside Edition branded their segment on the infamous yet-to-be-aired interview “Putin Pawn.” The Daily Mail wrote he was “sleeping with the enemy,” while Chris Cuomo ran a segment entitled “Is Tucker Carlson a Putin Pawn?” Greg Rilado insisted on Cuomo’s interview. “Tucker loves Russia; Russia loves Tucker.” Brian Stelter of Vanity Fair insisted, “We know that in the past, Carlson has promoted pro-Putin talking points, he’s blasted Ukraine and taken Russia’s side during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.” The European Union is also considering sanctioning Carlson for interviewing Putin.
Collective amnesia has spread across most sections of the mainstream media.
Tucker isn’t the first Western journalist to interview Putin. Former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly and others have done so, but they did it before the war. So what’s the difference now? The difference is U.S. funding, and because of that, somehow Tucker is a treasonous traitor and Russian stooge?
So why shouldn’t Tucker interview Putin?
We’ve only heard one side of the Russia-Ukrainian war. Isn’t it time the West heard from Putin? Leaving aside his dictatorial tendencies, shouldn’t journalists want to speak to all parties involved in conflict? Who better to ask about the conflict than Putin himself? We forgot too easily that Russia invaded Ukraine, not the United States.
But the mainstream media is caught up in the tribalistic fallacy
Tucker doesn’t seem to care about the backlash, nor should he. The job of every journalist is to inform the public by pursuing the truth. But we’ve learned one important thing about the mainstream media since this interview was announced:
The mainstream media thinks it’s omniscient
All the facts and intricate understanding have availed themselves regarding the conflict, so Tucker must be harboring ulterior motives; that’s what they’d have us believe.
In an age where the guardians of truth have reduced themselves to left-leaning tribalistic partisanship, curiosity and truth-seeking about the mind and motivations of Vladmir Putin appear suspicious, so it should not come as a surprise to us that Tucker would be demonised like this. They have accused Tucker of something they themselves are guilty of: partisanship, hackery, stoogery, and propaganda. The mainstream media is guilty of something the psychoanalysts long ago described as ‘projection’. Sometimes ideas, intentions, thoughts, and desires cannot be accepted by the ego, so they project onto an ‘external enemy’. Reluctantly in constant denial over its own degree of unapologetic propaganda, the media made Tucker the living embodiment of that projection. For interviewing Putin, he has somehow become treasonous and a pawn in Putin’s game of chess, but in the last few days, we’ve learned more about his accusers than we have about him.
