Dick Carlson

Richard Warner Carlson (born Richard Boynton; February 10, 1941) is an American journalist, diplomat and lobbyist who was the director of the Voice of America from 1986 to 1991.

Carlson has also been a newspaper and wire service reporter, a magazine writer, a TV and radio correspondent and a documentary filmmaker.

He is the father of conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson.

Carlson was born in Boston, the son of college student Richard Boynton and Dorothy Anderson, 18 and 15 years old, respectively.

He was born with rickets and mildly bent legs, as Anderson had starved herself to keep the pregnancy a secret.

In 1943, Richard Boynton attempted to persuade Dorothy to accompany him in stealing their baby and get married; when she refused on the grounds that she was a junior in high school and nobody but her parents knew about the baby, he shot and killed himself two blocks from her house.

Six weeks after he was born, Carlson was given to The Home for Little Wanderers, an orphanage in Boston.

The home ran a classified ad about him in the local papers, under the headline: "Home Wanted for Foundling."

Florence Moberger, a housewife in Malden, was the only person to respond.

Florence Moberger and her husband Carl had three children but were unable to have more.

Carl and Florence agreed to foster Carlson until a family wanted to adopt him.

Carlson lived with the Mobergers for over two years and stated that he developed a deep bond with the family.

During that time, Carlson claimed many prospective parents came to visit him, including his birth mother, Anderson, posing as her own sister.

In 1943, Carlson was adopted by a wool broker and his wife, the Carlson family.

Carlson's adoptive father died when he was twelve.

Carlson graduated from the Naval Academy Preparatory School and attended the University of Mississippi through an ROTC program, holding odd jobs in between the breaks.

He was discharged in 1962 and did not graduate.

He then moved to Los Angeles.

When Carlson was 22, he got a job working as a "copy boy" for night city editor Glenn Binford at the Los Angeles Times.

There he met and befriended Carl Lance Brisson, the son of actress Rosalind Russell.

In 1963, Carlson became a reporter for United Press International.

On his two days off, he wrote for Hearst movie columnist Louella Parsons in her Beverly Hills office.

He also wrote for UPI's Foreign Film Bureau, contributing fan magazine stories and working under the editorship of Henry Gris, the first president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

Two years later, Carlson and Brisson went to San Francisco to try to establish themselves, working as freelance independent television reporters, producing news features to sell for local and national distribution.

They made less than $100 per week, until they were hired full-time by KGO-TV in San Francisco.

Carlson and Brisson became best known for a September 1969 article in Look, in which they linked Mayor Joseph Alioto to organized crime.

Alioto later filed a $12 million libel lawsuit against the magazine.

In 1971, Carlson was hired by KABC-TV in Los Angeles.

Working with producer Pete Noyes, Carlson won several awards, including a Peabody Award for an exposé they produced about car promotion fraud.

In 1975, Noyes took a job at KFMB-TV in San Diego, and asked Carlson to join him as a combination news anchorman and investigative reporter.

However, Carlson walked away from the job after 18 months, tiring of news, calling it a "kid's game" that was "insipid, sophomoric and superficial" and laced with "a lot of arrogance and hypocrisy."

He admitted to being part of that hypocrisy, by citing a piece he did that outed a local tennis player, Dr. Renée Richards, as a transgender woman.

Carlson also targeted G. Elizabeth Carmichael and outed her as a transgender con-artist, refusing to refer to her as a woman when instructed to by the judge presiding over the trial.

This story was popularized in the HBO miniseries, The Lady and the Dale.

"'There are so many other things I think are important and interesting but the media can be counted on to do handstands over that kind of scandal and sexual sensation.'"

After three inconclusive jury trials, a fourth trial by judge without a jury in 1977 found that the plaintiff had sustained the burden of proving by clear and convincing evidence that defendant published the defamatory statements contained in the article with actual malice, that is, with reckless disregard for whether they were true or not, and was entitled to judgment in the sum of $350,000, plus costs.

and the legal costs helped bring about the demise of Look.

Legal technicalities prevented Carlson and Brisson from being held as defendants in the trial.

Carlson stood by the story, claiming several of their sources refused to testify or died.

In 1977, Carlson joined San Diego Federal Savings and Loan (later Great American First Savings), a savings and loan headed by Gordon Luce, a former cabinet member and close friend of Ronald Reagan, as its public affairs director.