When Fox News decided to end its long and, until recently, profitable relationship with Tucker Carlson, it didn’t do so with much fanfare.

John Krull, publisher, TheStatehouseFile.com

The announcement was a simple one. It said that Fox and Carlson had decided to part ways. He wasn’t even allowed to go back before the cameras and say farewell to the audience that had followed him for so long—and brought Fox so much money.

But that often is the way it goes when the truth catches up with someone.

The truth doesn’t need to make a lot of noise to have an impact. It doesn’t scream, shout or bluster because it doesn’t have to, because the truth doesn’t exist to frighten, intimidate or persuade anyone.

The truth is what it is.

The burden is on us to recognize it when we encounter it. Even if we try to deny it, the truth will have its day.

Failing to understand that simple but profound reality is what toppled Carlson from his perch and cost Fox hundreds of millions—and maybe even billions—of dollars.

Carlson’s career is a morality play acted out before the brightest lights. He started out as a gifted writer for conservative publications such as The Weekly Standard, where he demonstrated a talent for incisive storytelling and, at times, for principled indignation.

When, during an interview, then Texas Gov. George W. Bush mocked the pleas of a woman on death row not to be executed, Carlson expressed disgust at the future president’s callousness.

The magnetic pull of television, though, caused Carlson’s ethical compass to waver. From his first appearances on the air, he was a compelling presence, intense but also glib. He was from the get-go a savage infighter, one who felt no compunction about piling on or taking a cheap shot.

The higher he climbed, the more Carlson’s worst instincts prevailed.

Whatever courteous regard he had for the views of others eroded and ultimately disappeared. He came to treat anyone who disagreed with him and his ideological walking buddies not as opponents or even adversaries but as enemies. He often treated fellow citizens with greater contempt and cruelty than he reserved for foreign autocrats and tyrants.

Somewhere along the way, he stopped being appalled when men in power made light of the suffering of the powerless.

His respect for the truth also vanished over time.

What became clear during the discovery process in the Dominion lawsuit that prompted Fox to cough up $787.5 million is that Carlson aired assertions he knew to be false.

In the aftermath of the devastating settlement, Fox apologists tried to spin the payout as a victory for the cable network by saying that Dominion might not have prevailed if it had gone to trial. The voting machine company would have had to demonstrate “actual malice,” a difficult legal standard.

As is so often the case with Fox’s statements, that isn’t the whole truth. The other legal language that applies in this instance is “reckless disregard for the truth”—meaning that Fox didn’t care whether something was true or not when it reported it.

Carlson’s documented private acknowledgements that he knew the assertions of former President Donald Trump and his minions that the 2020 presidential election was stolen were lies and yet he touted them anyway demonstrate his concern for the truth was minimal at best.

He trafficked in such falsehoods and untruths, his private correspondence made clear, to build an audience and boost Fox’s stock price. He traded in lies to make money.

He was the poster boy for reckless disregard for the truth.

That’s why Fox finally had to cut him loose. By refusing to maintain his on-air act and spout Trumpian spuriousness in private, he gave away the game and created massive legal exposure for his employer.

There is irony to his tumble.

Tucker Carlson made himself and Fox a lot of money over the years by treating the truth with contempt.

In the end, though, telling the truth in private about the lies he and others spewed is what tripped him up.

That’s the way the truth works.

No matter how hard we work to disregard, deny or thwart it, the truth remains, unalterable and unbreakable.

Just waiting for us to recognize it.

FOOTNOTE: John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The views expressed are those of the author only and should not be attributed to Franklin College.