U.S. Media Outlets Demand Access To January 6 Footage Given to Tucker Carlson By Speaker Kevin McCarthy

A coalition of news organizations sent a letter to congressional leadership on Thursday demanding access to the thousands of hours of footage of the January 6 Capitol riot, which House Speaker Kevin McCarthy gave to Tucker Carlson and Tucker Carlson only.

“Without full public access to the complete historical record, there is concern that an ideologically-based narrative of an already polarizing event will take hold in the public consciousness, with destabilizing risks to the legitimacy of Congress, the Capitol Police, and the various federal investigations and prosecutions of Jan. 6 crimes,” the letter stated, referring to security footage from January 6, 2021.

Attorney Charles Tobin sent the letter on behalf of a coalition of news outlets: CBS News, CNN, Politico, ProPublica, ABC, Axios, Advance, Scripps, the Los Angeles Times and Gannett. He argues in the letter that the 44,000 hours of footage should be made available to other news organizations beyond right-wing Fox News so that “the incredible public interest in understanding what transpired on January 6 crosses party lines.”

“Now that the CCTV videos have been released to one member of the news media – one whose program is categorized by its own network as opinion programming – they must be released to the rest of the news media as well,” Tobin wrote.

Before the letter was sent out, on Wednesday, McCarthy defended his position in an interview with the New York Times: “I was asked in the press about these tapes, and I said they do belong to the American public. I think sunshine lets everybody make their own judgment.”

Tobin reportedly sent the letter to McCarthy, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. 

Another news coalition—that includes the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Associated Press—sent a separate letter to McCarthy on Monday, according to the Post.

Meanwhile, Fox News has yet to air the hot commodity footage. After receiving the content, Carlson is already stirring the pot. “Some of our smartest producers have been there looking at this stuff and trying to figure out what it means and how it contradicts or not the story we’ve been told for more than two years,” he said on his show on Monday.

On top of news organizations, several politicians are also furious that McCarthy only granted access to Fox News.

In a lengthy and impassioned tweet on Wednesday, Schumer wrote: “Giving someone as disingenuous as Tucker Carlson exclusive access to this type of sensitive information is a grave mistake by Speaker McCarthy that will only embolden supporters of the Big Lie and weaken faith in our democracy.”