Freelance photographer Tristan Spinski said he had to hide, lock himself in an upstairs room, and call the police after Fox News Host Tucker Carlson accused the photojournalist of attempting to dox him, The Guardian reported.
Carlson said on his July 20 broadcast that Spinski, a New York Times photojournalist, and Murray Carpenter, a New York Times reporter, were working on a story “about where my family and I live.”
His concerns came a few years after anarchists terrorized his family and vandalized his property, The Washington Post reported.
The New York Times “assured” Fox News that Spinski and Murray were not trying to dox Carlson but were trying to write a feature story about his “life in the state, where he spends several months each year,” The Washington Post reported.
Spinski said people came to his home in Maine at 9:57 p.m., less than an hour after Carlson’s show ends, to threaten him.
Spinski’s brother-in-law told the police that there was a “loud banging noise downstairs and some threats coming to the house recently just in the past hour,” according to the 911 transcript.
“We’re currently upstairs but they’re trying to break in downstairs,” he said.
Spinski’s brother-in-law said an unknown person a voicemail told him: “We know where you live, beware” and other “things of that nature.”
“Yeah, there was a definite … we can feel our house when someone is trying to get into it downstairs,” he said. “It was significant.”
Carpenter also said he was harassed after Carlson’s segment, The Washington Post reported.
The Lincoln County Commissioners office said it provided the 911 transcript, but it did not confirm that it was Spinski’s brother-in-law who made the call.
Spinski himself has not commented on the 911 call, but he said that he will no longer work on the story.
“I’m apolitical in my work, and this has politicised my role in some ways,” he said. “I can’t photo [sic] a story that I’m a part of, if that makes sense.”
