Meet The Jewish Researcher Who Unearthed Tucker Carlson’s Shocking Statements
Tucker Carlson speaks onstage during Politicon 2018 at Los Angeles Convention Center on October 21, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. Image by Rich Polk/Getty Images for Politicon
By Aiden Pink March 14, 2019
Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson is facing renewed boycott calls thanks to an investigation done by Madeline Peltz, a researcher for the liberal group Media Matters for America, that revealed he had made several racist and misogynist statements in 2006-2011 during segments with the Florida radio host Bubba the Love Sponge.
Here’s what you should know about Peltz:
Peltz pushed for the investigation:
Media Matters monitors Fox News and frequently publishes analyses of the most outrageous things uttered on the network. But the organization’s president, Angelo Carusone, credited Peltz for taking the initiative to delve into Carlson’s past.
“We didn’t just try to embarrass him,” Carusone told The Washington Post. “We took things that directly echo his show now, and things that had some relevancy today.”
She told the Post she thought Carlson was trying to “thread the needle of mainstreaming overt white nationalism” through his comments about immigration and demographic change.
It’s her first full-time job:
Peltz, 24, covers the night shift for Media Matters, where she’s worked since January 2017. She previously interned for Democratic Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown and for the progressive Center on Budget and Policy Priorities think tank. She graduated in 2016 from Oberlin College, where she was the co-chair of the College Democrats and wrote for the student newspaper.
The powerful “authoritarian” forces that @TuckerCarlson says are disappearing people like him are…a 24-year-old researcher working her first post-college job from a D.C group house with five roommates and a dog named Noodles https://t.co/2Sqw1iuzQP
— eli m. rosenberg (@emrosenberg) March 14, 2019
She’s been subjected to anti-Semitism:
In the course of her investigations of the nexus of white nationalism and conservative media, Peltz has been targeted by anti-Semites, on Twitter and on the prominent white supremacist website The Daily Stormer. Sometimes she’s clapped back at bigots:
never been more Jewish in my life https://t.co/PYksLPGvSq
— Madeline Peltz (@peltzmadeline) November 3, 2018
Contact Aiden Pink at pink@forward.com or on Twitter, @aidenpink
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