Hey, it’s Tucker Carlson.

You often hear people say the news is full of lies, but most of the time that’s not exactly right. Much of what you see on television or read in the New York Times is in fact true in the literal sense. It can pass one of the media’s own fact checks. Lawyers would be willing to sign off on it. In fact, they may have. But that doesn’t make it true. It’s not true.

At the most basic level, the news you consume is a lie, a lie of the stealthiest and most insidious kind. Facts have been withheld on purpose, along with proportion and perspective. You are being manipulated.

How does that work? Let’s see. If I tell you that a man has been unjustly arrested for armed robbery that is not, strictly speaking, a lie. He may have been framed. At this point, there’s been no trial, so no one can really say. But if I don’t mention the fact that the same man has been arrested for the same crime six times before, am I really informing you? No, I’m not. I’m misleading you. And that’s what the news media are doing, in every story that matters, every day of the week, every week of the year.

What is it like to work in a system like that? After more than 30 years in the middle of it, we can tell you stories. The best you can hope for in the news business at this point is the freedom to tell the fullest truth you can. But there are always limits, and you know that if you bump up against those limits often enough, you will be fired for it. That’s not a guess; it’s guaranteed. Every person who works in English-language media understands that.

The rule of what you can’t say defines everything. It’s filthy, really, and it’s utterly corrupting. You can’t have a free society if people aren’t allowed to say what they think is true. Speech is the fundamental prerequisite for democracy. That’s why it’s enshrined in the first of our constitutional amendments.

Amazingly, as of tonight, there aren’t many platforms left that allow free speech. The last big one remaining in the world, the only one, is Twitter, where we are now. Twitter has long served as the place where our national conversation incubates and develops. Twitter is not a partisan site. Everybody’s allowed here, and we think that’s a good thing. And yet for the most part the news that you see analyzed on Twitter comes from media organizations that are themselves thinly-disguised propaganda outlets. You see it on cable news, you talk about it on Twitter. The result may feel like a debate, but actually, the gatekeepers are still in charge.

We think that’s a bad system. We know exactly how it works, and we’re sick of it.

Starting soon, we’ll be bringing a new version of the show we’ve been doing for the last six and a half years to Twitter. We’ll be bringing some other things too, which we’ll tell you about. But for now, we’re just grateful to be here. Free speech is the main right that you have. Without it, you have no others.

See you soon.

Tucker Carlson · 4:42 PM · May 9, 2023