Fox News’ Tucker Carlson went to war with CNN on Thursday over its president Jeff Zucker’s recent criticisms of Fox.
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Zucker accused Fox News of being “state-run TV” and called the cable news channel a “pure propaganda machine.” (RELATED: CNN’s President Jeff Zucker Attacks Fox News As A ‘Pure Propaganda Machine’)
“There are a handful of really good journalists there, but I think they are lost in what is a complete propaganda machine and the idea that it’s a news channel is really not the case at all,” Zucker said during an event in New York City.
Carlson reminded Zucker that branches of CNN International are literally propaganda networks bought and paid for by authoritarian governments.
For example, CNN Turk was recently purchased by an unnamed conglomerate with deep ties to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“Now we know, on some level, all criticism is self-criticism — you accuse others of being secretly what you know you are,” Carlson said. “As it happens, just today, just as Jeff Zucker was speaking, a controlling interest in CNN Turk…was sold to an arm of the regime there.”
“Jeff Zucker’s network is now in effect in business with the authoritarian, Islamist, and highly anti-American Erdogan regime,” he continued. “In Turkey, where it actually matters, CNN is literally state-run TV.”
Carlson explained that more than 8,000 pro-democracy protesters were injured while protesting the Erdogan government in 2013, yet CNN Turk opted not to cover the news.
“Jeff Zucker runs a sleazy little sideline selling airtime to repressive governments in a lot of places around the world,” he asserted, noting that CNN also has a network in the Philippines that is partly controlled by Rodrigo Duterte, who kills his own citizens with death squads.