Richard Carlson, Journalist Who Led Voice of America, Dies at 84

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Richard Carlson, Journalist Who Led Voice of America, Dies at 84
The father of the conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, he won a Peabody Award for television reporting that uncovered a car company’s fraud.


Richard Carlson in the 1970s. He had a long career in journalism before moving to Washington and entering government service in 1985. Bill Reid

By Richard Sandomir
March 30, 2025

Richard Carlson, who won a Peabody Award for his investigative television reports about an automobile company’s brazen fraud — during which he also outed the company’s founder as a transgender woman — and who later ran Voice of America during the last years of the Cold War, died on March 24 at his home in Boca Grande, Fla. He was 84.

His son Tucker Carlson, the conservative commentator and former Fox News host, said the cause was pneumonia. … The younger Mr. Carlson said that his father, who strongly believed in the role of Voice of America, did not know before his death about President Trump’s executive order aimed at dismantling the government-funded broadcaster. A federal judge temporarily blocked the plan on Friday.

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He collaborated with another journalist, Lance Brisson, on an exposé for Look magazine in 1969 that accused Mayor Joseph Alioto of San Francisco of having ties to Mafia figures. Mr. Alioto sued Look’s owner, Cowles Communications, for libel. In 1977 — six years after Look had folded and following four trials in federal court — a judge awarded Mr. Alioto $350,000 in damages. Mr. Carlson and Mr. Brisson were not defendants.

In 1975, when he was at KABC-TV in Los Angeles, Mr. Carlson and a producer, Pete Noyes, won a Peabody for uncovering fraudulent claims by G. Elizabeth Carmichael, who ran the Twentieth Century Motor Car Company. Even while she was a fugitive from a counterfeiting arrest years before, she built the company around the Dale, a three-wheeled car that she said could get 70 miles to the gallon. But she never produced anything more than a prototype.

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Richard Sandomir, an obituaries reporter, has been writing for The Times for more than three decades. More about Richard Sandomir