NEW YORK (AP) – Tucker Carlson says The New York Times wants to put his family in danger, the newspaper says he knowingly lied and that fans of the Fox News presenter are now fighting.
The latest media conflagration that occurred on Tuesday is more than ideological, with issues of privacy and personal security at its heart.
Carlson, the primetime host who just returned from a vacation after his top writer quit for posting racist material online, said on the Fox News Channel Monday that the Times was working on a story about where he and his family live. . He said there is no journalistic “conceivable justification” for such a story.
“Why is The New York Times doing a story about the location of my family’s home?” I ask. “Well, you know why. To harm us. To hurt my wife and children so that I shut up and stop disagreeing with them. They believe in strength.
In response, the Times said that while it does not confirm what it may or may not publish, “it does not plan to expose any Tucker Carlson residences that Carlson was aware of prior to its issuance.”
Fox News had no comment on the matter on Tuesday.
Carlson, a polarizing political commentator, has cause for concern on the matter. In 2018, a group of about 20 protesters arrived at his home in Washington, DC one night, knocking and damaging the front door while his wife was home alone.
She called the police while hiding in a closet, she said.
The protesters returned on another occasion and sent threatening messages, he said. Eventually he sold the house and moved his family.
“We try to ignore it,” he said. “He felt cowardly selling our house and leaving. We had raised our children in the neighborhood and we loved it. But in the end, that’s what we did. We have four children. It just wasn’t worth it. “
Carlson now has homes on the Florida Gulf Coast and in western Maine, according to published reports.
He told the Sun Journal in Lewiston, Maine, a story published Tuesday that he now lives in Maine for much of the year. She has reportedly taped many of her shows from a library near her home and is renovating an old city garage for use as a broadcast studio.
On his Monday show, Carlson set the stage, which he himself opposed, for a reporter and photographer who allegedly worked on the Times story. He issued their names and, in the case of the journalist, a photo.
“How would Murray Carpenter and his photographer, Tristan Spinski, feel if we told you where they live, if we transmitted photos of their homes?” Carlson said. “What if we published the addresses of the soulless robot editors in the New York Times who assigned and managed this incitement to violence against my family?”
Some of Carlson’s fans, which generally attracts about 4 million viewers every night of the week, apparently took it as a sign.
Several people on Twitter posted what they said was a Carpenter address and phone numbers, along with an address and a photo of a house allegedly owned by Spinski. It was unclear if they were accurate.
A message, retweeted more than a hundred times, was from a woman who said her son was a friend of Carlson’s children. One person posted, “Karma is coming for you, Murray,” and another wrote, “We are going to visit Mr. Carpenters’ family this weekend.”
Carpenter occasionally writes for The New York Times, most recently a piece last year about the late artist Robert Indiana and the house he bought on a remote island in Maine.
The Times had no immediate comment on the release of the information. A message left at Carpenter’s house was not immediately answered Tuesday.
