Is Shepard Smith Is on Again Its Time to Turn It Off From Fox
Shepard Smith, Play tricks News Anchor, Abruptly Departs From Network
To critics who accuse Fox News of being uniformly pro-Trump, the network often points to the edgeless-truth reporting of Shepard Smith, its veteran chief news anchor, whose coverage of the Trump White House stood out on a channel known all-time for conservative opinion.
Starting now, Fox News will need to indicate to somebody else.
In an announcement that stunned colleagues, Mr. Smith ended his Friday newscast by signing off from Play a trick on News — for skillful. "Recently, I asked the visitor to allow me to leave," Mr. Smith said calmly. "After requesting that I stay, they obliged."
A member of the network's founding staff in 1996, Mr. Smith became increasingly conspicuous at Fob News for his skepticism on President Trump. "Why is it lie later on lie afterward lie?" Mr. Smith asked during a 2022 newscast; this summer, he accounted the president'due south attacks on minority female lawmakers as "misleading and xenophobic."
His pointed comments, closer in tone to that of CNN anchors like Anderson Cooper than of Fox News mainstays like Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, irked Mr. Trump, who had taken to taunting Mr. Smith on Twitter as the network's "lowest-rated ballast." Other Play a trick on News personalities were as well unimpressed: Last calendar month, Mr. Carlson openly mocked Mr. Smith on-air, a rare moment of intramural discord bursting into public view.
[ Read well-nigh on-air sniping at Fob News .]
The internal tensions had frustrated Mr. Smith, 55, who was dismayed at the disconnect betwixt some of the pro-Trump cheerleading in prime number-time and the reporting produced by the network'south newsroom, co-ordinate to ii people close to the anchor who requested anonymity to share his private observations. Mr. Smith had been because an exit from Fox News for several weeks, the people said.
On Fri, in public at least, all parties played down any difficulties.
"I've worked with the most talented, dedicated and focused professionals I've ever known," Mr. Smith said on his farewell newscast. "I'll miss them and our time together greatly."
In a farewell statement, Jay Wallace, the network's president and executive editor, called the anchor's exit "especially hard."
Mr. Smith was familiar to viewers for his authoritative only genial Mississippi lilt. But one hint at the strain on Mr. Smith was his decision to get out in the middle of his multiyear contract, which he signed in 2018. Exiting partway through a deal is a rarity in the cutthroat television business and the motility is probable to cost him millions of dollars. Mr. Smith also agreed to abide past a noncompete clause, telling viewers, "I won't be reporting elsewhere, at to the lowest degree in the near future."
Carl Cameron, a Fox News reporter who left the network in 2022 and has since become an outspoken critic, said he was "not the least bit surprised" by Mr. Smith's decision.
"He's a warrior and he stayed in the war longer than anybody should accept," Mr. Cameron said in an interview on Friday. "We both would reassure ourselves that authentic, factual news was a mode to distinguish ourselves in what was becoming an increasingly more and more partisan network."
"God help the journalists at Pull a fast one on hang in there, because they're doing the right matter," Mr. Cameron added.
With Mr. Smith's get out, Fox's news coverage will be led by other star nonpartisan anchors, including Bret Baier, the "Pull a fast one on News Dominicus" moderator Chris Wallace and Martha MacCallum. At a recent panel word in New York with advertisers, Ms. MacCallum defended the network's journalism, proverb pointedly of Mr. Trump, "Contrary to the opinion of some people, he's not our boss."
Pull a fast one on News released a poll this week that showed a majority of respondents in favor of Mr. Trump being impeached, prompting a presidential rebuke. On Twitter, Mr. Trump lamented that Fox News was "much unlike than it used to exist in the expert old days," citing by name Mr. Smith and the former Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, now a paid Fox News analyst.
In March, the president lobbed another insult at Mr. Smith, saying that, along with a pair of Fox News weekend anchors, he should be working at CNN, a network the president often accuses of having a liberal bias.
The relationship betwixt Mr. Trump and Fox News is closely scrutinized — so much so that an alternate theory sprang up on social media on Friday most Mr. Smith'southward abrupt exit.
Some wondered if Mr. Trump had orchestrated the deviation of his to the lowest degree-favorite Fox News anchor through a private coming together this week between Rupert Murdoch, the mogul who controls the network, and Mr. Trump's attorney full general, William Barr.
[More than on the coming together between William Barr and Rupert Murdoch .]
A spokesman for Mr. Smith, Chris Giglio, said "there is absolutely no truth" to a connection between the two events. "This was Shep'due south decision and his alone," Mr. Giglio wrote in an e-mail on Friday. "He's taking an extended period of time off to be with his family unit. Following that who knows — he is not retiring."
Mr. Murdoch is usually reluctant to brand prominent personnel moves at his media properties considering of public or private pressure. And Mr. Trump, asked at the White Business firm on Friday if he had a connexion to Mr. Smith'due south exit, sounded surprised by the news.
"Did I hear Shepard Smith is leaving?" he asked reporters on the South Lawn. "Is he leaving considering of bad ratings? Tell me, I don't know." He added: "I wish him well."
"Shepard Smith Reporting," the anchor's 3 p.one thousand. newscast, routinely crush rivals on CNN and MSNBC in the ratings and a key demographic, according to Nielsen. Simply Mr. Smith's show, in a traditionally low-viewership fourth dimension slot, had one of the smallest audiences of Fox News programs overall.
Mr. Smith'due south exit negotiations were known to just a few senior figures at Fox News'due south Manhattan headquarters, and several of his network colleagues were visibly shocked past his conclusion.
"I'grand a little stunned and a niggling heartbroken," the ballast Neil Cavuto, who follows Mr. Smith'due south bear witness on weekdays, told viewers moments after the anchor had appear his departure. Mr. Cavuto called himself "shellshocked" and had problem finding his words at first.
John Roberts, Play a joke on News'south chief White House correspondent, who also appeared on air moments afterwards Mr. Smith's announcement, chosen the move "completely shocking" and compared learning of the news to being "hitting by a subway train."
In his signoff on Friday, Mr. Smith ended his Fox News career with words that are likely to exist read closely for any significant between the lines.
"Even in our currently polarized nation, it's my hope that the facts volition win the day," Mr. Smith said. "That the truth will always matter. That journalism and journalists volition thrive. I'm Shepard Smith, Fox News, New York."
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/11/business/media/shepard-smith-fox-news.html
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