This is one of the greatest things ever said on television and it was said by a Fox News anchor. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it presages the end of Smith at that network (he has long been one of the more honest Fox personalities), and this may be the straw that broke the camel’s back. But he’s absolutely spot on here:
May 06 2012
Shep Smith on Romney and Gingrich
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Daniel Fincke
May 6, 2012 at 10:05 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I love Shep. I collected his best videos on a number of important topics in a post a couple years ago. And here he was last year on union busting in Wisconsin.
I have long wished he would get a primetime MSNBC show guided by both his journalistic and moral sensibilities.
Marcus Ranum
May 6, 2012 at 10:08 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Wonderful!
regexp
May 6, 2012 at 10:10 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Fox News needs at least one generally honest talking head to balance out the rest. Sheps that guy.
Michael Heath
May 6, 2012 at 10:44 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
regexp writes:
I only wish that were true. While Mr. Smith has some moments as we see here, that’s all they are, mere moments relative to thousands of hours his show is broadcast. The general thread which drives the Fox narrative is alive and well during Mr. Smith’s segments, e.g., never ever presenting climate change stories consistent with how climate scientists acknowledge the story. Instead one would think a mere handful of liberal Gore disciples are pushing to take over the world where climate change is a highly dubious “theory” which is controversial within the scientific community.
And while Mr. Smith may not be long for Fox if his conscience is troubling him – which it appears to do some portion of time, if I’m Roger Aisles and Bill O’Reilly* I’m loving that Smith is a Fox News broadcaster. Simply because these mere moments can be leveraged to provide them with the dishonest argument Smith is proof that Fox News is “fair and balanced”.
*I purposefully do not include Sean Hannity in this list, he being the other major on-air talent which drives Fox viewer loyalty. That’s simply because I don’t think Mr. Hannity’s intelligent enough to understand how Shep Smith’s perceived integrity helps him and Fox News. Hannity only knows how to defend the Republican party at all costs, where a sacrifice here and there is within his tool kit, Sen. Trent Lott’s arguably innocent gaffe, but not to the somewhat sophsticated level of duplicity demonstrated by Roger Aisles.
tacitus
May 6, 2012 at 11:18 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Isn’t Smith’s show mostly newsy stuff anyway, not the wall-to-wall talking heads the rest of the evening lineup consists of? Not terribly balanced, really. And I suspect that if Smith was at all interested in his own political show on another network, he would probably have one by now. Sometimes people are quite happy doing what they are doing, especially if they are getting well paid for it.
josephmccauley
May 6, 2012 at 11:45 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’m not a regular watcher of Shep, but I caught this one the other day. What a nice way to say what we all know. My expression of that thought would have a lot of curse words. Kudos to him.
jonhendry
May 6, 2012 at 1:11 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“I have long wished he would get a primetime MSNBC show guided by both his journalistic and moral sensibilities.”
Preferably on the weekend, instead of the god damned prison shows and dated celebrity profiles. That network is so damned useless on the weekend.
(I love how Rachel Maddow, at the end of her Friday show, makes comments about the following prison show that make clear what she thinks of it.)
michaelraymer
May 6, 2012 at 2:50 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Maybe if we weren’t locking up such a large percentage of our population, there wouldn’t be cable news shows popping up about it. Though I admit the coverage isn’t great, and seems rather biased. They only show the worst of the worst, which tends to paint the picture that those are the only people behind bars. I haven’t seen them show a guy doing time for possession of marijuana. I suppose that’s not a big ratings draw, or something.
d cwilson
May 7, 2012 at 9:29 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Absolutely true. Allowing Smith to occasionally remark on how absurd the GOP can get is akin to having the lone (and highly ineffectual) liberal voice on The Five. It gives them something to point at and say, “See! We’re not the monolithic republican block you claim we are!” That’s why I don’t see Smith leaving any time soon, despite the avalanche of letters from Foxtards demanding he get fired.
Michael Heath
May 7, 2012 at 9:44 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Re the benefit to Fox News given that Shep Smith occasionally strays off the reservation:
I should have noted that my point about the benefit Mr. Smith brings to the Fox enterprise, which I assume is recognized by Roger Aisles, is not a mere assumption with Bill O’Reilly.
I’ve constantly seen Mr. O’Reilly as interviewee point to Mr. Smith as proof Fox is ‘fair and balanced®’. What’s disappointing is that while O’Reilly brings this up every single time as only one of two rebuttal points, the interviewer never follows-up. This defense is a major fallacy of balance logical error and even if true, which it isn’t – we empirically know Fox News viewers are the most misinformed viewers of all major media news consumers, it fails to eradicate the fact that he and Sean Hannity misinform their viewers during their respective hours.
Mr. O’Reilly also insinuates that lying and misinforming is OK if its a news analysis show – his emphasis and what he asserts he does – at least the first assertion is also a logical fallacy which goes unchallenged when asserted. The standards of journalism do not justify journalists who provide opinion to misinform their audience, they still have the ethical obligation to inform their viewers.
mattandrews
May 7, 2012 at 12:30 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Don’t kid yourself, folks. Gingrich a few weeks back complained that Fox News went too easy on Romney. Shep Smith is basically stating Fox corporate policy that Newt’s a pariah now.
This strays into conspiracy theory, but personally I think that Shep is their designated “rouge” anchor. That way Ailes and Murdoch can point to him and say “Look! We are fair and balanced!”
It’s hard to believe that an organization that obsessed with pushing a conservative narrative would tolerate an employee spontaneously going off-script, at least as often Smith supposedly does.