Back in January, Simon & Schuster announced it would cancel its plans for a book by Sen. Josh Hawley that, ironically enough, was about censorship. The decision came after Hawley objected to the Electoral College certification following the Capitol Hill riot.
"As a publisher it will always be our mission to amplify a variety of voices and viewpoints: At the same time we take seriously our larger public responsibility as citizens, and cannot support Senator Hawley after his role in what became a dangerous threat," the publisher said.
Hawley blasted the company, saying its decision to cancel his book was a "direct assault on the First Amendment."
My statement on the woke mob at @simonschuster pic.twitter.com/pDxtZvz5J0
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) January 7, 2021
Fox News's Tucker Carlson found the incident so important, he decided to include a section about it in his forthcoming book. Interestingly, Simon & Schuster is the publisher of that book.
"Personally, what happened to Josh Hawley was more than an academic question," Carlson said.
"At the time his book was canceled I was also under contract to produce a book for Simon & Schuster—a collection of magazine journalism," the Fox News host explained. "Simon & Schuster was paying me to do it but it still seemed cowardly to not address directly what they had just done to Josh Hawley. So I called the head of the company, the CEO John Karp, and told him that I thought canceling a book for partisan reasons was disgusting and wrong and it set a very bad precedent for American publishing."
Carlson said he wanted to include a section in his book about what the company did, "as a kind of snapshot of what was happening across the country."
He interviewed Karp and other executives at Simon & Schuster, asking about the circumstances under which the company is "willing to censor the political views of your authors."
Carlson described the interviews as both uncomfortable and "fascinating," and said some of their responses were honest while others were lies.
"Their answers revealed in the clearest possible way how corporate America undermines free speech and the country itself," he said.
"The Long Slide: Thirty Years in American Journalism," will come out Aug. 10, Carlson said.