shep smith
https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/shep-smith/ insurrection
"Stop the tape!': CNBC's Shep Smith demands producers cut off Trump's dangerous video live on air
an 1120 250k kia
https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/shep-smith/
https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trump-lashes-out-at-a-fox-news-host-who-dared-to-talk-to-a-critic-of-the-president/
cavuto
np lnx
Trump lashes out at a Fox News host who dared to talk to a critic of the president
Fox News
Written by David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement February 21, 2020
President Donald Trump may or may not have had something to do with last year’s sudden resignation of Shepard Smith, a Fox News anchor he often targeted who had regularly criticized him, and it seems his starting another campaign targeting another Fox News anchor.
Neil Cavuto hosts several shows on Fox News and Fox Business and is senior vice president and managing editor at the business channel.
Cavuto, on rare occasions, criticizes the president or invites on guests who do. It’s far from an everyday occurrence, but a recent conservative pundit, A.B. Stoddard, caught Trump’s eye — and ire — and he’s gunning for a fight and a firing.
Donald J. Trump
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@realDonaldTrump
So @TeamCavuto has very bad ratings on @foxnews with his Fake guests like A.B.Stoddard and others that still haven’t figured it all out. Will he get the same treatment as his friend Shepherd Smith, who also suffered from the ratings drought?
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Note how Trump makes clear he wants Cavuto gone, asking if he will “get the same treatment as his friend Shepherd Smith.”
Trump is using his usual formula, claiming someone’s ratings are bad, or a media outlet is “failing,” or losing money, regardless of facts.
In 2018 Cavuto all but decimated Trump:
Last night at his rally Trump spewed vitriol against Cavuto and Smith.
Breaking911
@Breaking911
Trump slams Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and former anchor Shepard Smith
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Since his impeachment acquittal Trump was been on the warpath, firing administration officials who testified against him. Earlier Friday it was reported Trump rehired a fired administration official, his former body man, and promoted him to head the White House personnel office. Johnny McEntee’s first act was to target for purging all executive branch employees across all government agencies who are “Never-Trumpers.”
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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/sean-hannity-trump-political-operative-and-fox-news-doesnt-care
you’d be forgiven if, amid the lead-up to President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate and the ongoing Democratic presidential primary, you missed BuzzFeed News’ story last week detailing how Fox News host Sean Hannity served “as a central point of contact” between the president and his associates under investigation during special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election. But the report -- and Fox News’ lack of interest in addressing it -- marks new terrain for Hannity’s unpaid position in the Trump White House and his network’s effective merger with the administration.
Hannity has spent the last few years finding new and original ways to set afire the journalism ethics rules enforced elsewhere, from endorsing the then-Republican nominee in a campaign ad to failing to disclose that he shared a lawyer with the president to speaking at one of Trump’s rallies. Each of these instances underscored Hannity’s unconscionable role as a political operative whose first loyalty is to Trump, someone who simultaneously hosts a propaganda show enforcing the president’s positions while shaping Trump’s views as a powerful adviser.
The details BuzzFeed News revealed after combing through summaries of Mueller team interviews with key witnesses show that the Fox host hasn’t just been advising the president. Former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort and longtime Trump lawyer Michael Cohen each revealed to the special counsel’s office that Hannity had also counseled them on how to respond to probes from Mueller and the House of Representatives, respectively, even as he reported on their cases on his Fox show.
BuzzFeed News quotes from a particularly instructive summary of an October 2018 interview, in which Manafort describes Hannity as acting as a “back channel” to the president between the time FBI raided Manafort’s residence in July 2017 and when he was indicted in October 2017. “Manafort knew Hannity was speaking to Trump around then because Hannity would tell Manafort to hang in there, that he had been talking to Trump, that Trump had his back, and things like that,” the summary states. “Manafort understood his conversations with Hannity to be a message from Trump.”
The summary provides new context for text messages Hannity sent Manafort during that period urging the former Trump campaign chair to “stay strong,” suggesting that Manafort at least believed the remarks to be from the president to influence him not to cooperate with the Mueller probe. And it shows Hannity privately and egregiously engaged with the subjects of his putative reporting.
These revelations would be completely unacceptable at any other network. But the most important line of BuzzFeed News’ story is the one that indicates that for Hannity’s network, they aren’t even worth publicly addressing: “Fox News declined to answer a series of questions BuzzFeed News sent the network about Hannity’s appearance in the documents.”
This passivity marks a change for Fox, which has previously responded to new revelations about its star host’s second life as an unpaid Trump aide first by pledging tough action and later by at least pretending to care with empty statements.Hannity’s 2016 appearance in the Trump ad led to a swift statement from a Fox spokesperson promising that it would not happen again. After news broke that Cohen had at one point represented Hannity -- a fact the Fox host never mentioned on-air while discussing Cohen’s own legal troubles -- Fox issued a statement saying that the host had been “spoken to.” And Hannity’s appearance on stage at the November 2018 Trump rally led to Fox statement that the network did not “condone” the appearance and that it “has been addressed.”
These were all woefully insufficient responses to what would likely have been, at any other news outlet, firing offenses.But they at least indicated that Fox felt it had to say something about its employee’s casual disregard for basic precepts of journalistic integrity. That no longer appears to be the case.
It’s possible that Fox executives have simply given up trying to deny the reality that Hannity’s top priority is the president, not their network or their audience. But this shift in public relations strategy may also speak to a shift in the power dynamic between Fox’s “news” and “opinion” side. In the past, Hannity’s ethical misdeeds would lead to an angry backlash from his “news”-side colleagues, sometimes spilling out into public view in the form of enraged anonymous comments to other outlets.
But over the past year, Fox’s “news” side has been completely routed in this internal battle. Longtime lead anchor Shepard Smith, who was willing to push back against the disinformation rampant elsewhere on the network and even feud with his prime-time colleagues, left the channel in October. His replacement, Bill Hemmer, is more comfortable hewing to the pro-Trump line and has used the media rollout for his new gig carefully avoiding ruffling the feathers of either Fox’s “opinion” hosts or the White House. Hemmer’s own replacement, Ed Henry, has spent the last few years cozily ensconced on Fox & Friends’ curvy couch as a co-host of its weekend edition. With Smith gone, voices of criticism within Fox seem to have been muted.
With the “news” side either replaced by shills or cowed by the changing of the guard, Fox executives no longer face internal pressure to rein in the likes of Hannity. That may leave them with no reason to restrain their opinion hosts other than their own regard for journalistic ethics. And as the ongoing silence on the Manafort connection shows, that doesn’t amount to much.
cf
11/06/18 10:25 AM EST
04/16/18 3:55 PM EDT
10/11/19 4:59 PM EDT
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https://www.vox.com/2019/10/1/20893112/fox-news-trump-identity-crisis-ukraine-whistleblower-chris-wallace-andrew-napolitano
no lnx many, vid
48 hours illustrating how Trump’s abuse-of-power scandal has split Fox News
Hannity is pushing Clinton conspiracy theories while the network’s top judicial analyst talks about impeachment.
By Aaron Rupar@atrupar Oct 1, 2019, 12:30pm EDT
Sean Hannity at the Republican National Convention.
[pix Fox News personality Sean Hannity at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, on July 18, 2016. Benjamin Lowy/Getty Images
What a difference a few hours makes.
Had you tuned in to Fox News for Monday’s edition of Sean Hannity’s show, you would’ve been treated to President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, pushing nonsensical conspiracy theories about prominent Democrats colluding with Ukraine after the 2016 presidential election to dig up dirt on Trump — claims that were met with zero pushback from Hannity.
Aaron Rupar
@atrupar
Giuliani begins his Hannity interview by pushing a conspiracy theory about Obama and Hillary Clinton colluding with Ukraine to dig up dirt on Trump in January 2017 -- which doesn't make much sense since the presidential election had come and gone by then
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But had you been watching Neil Cavuto’s late-afternoon show earlier that day, you would’ve seen Fox News senior legal analyst Andrew Napolitano making a case for Trump’s impeachment.
Aaron Rupar
@atrupar
Fox News legal analyst Andrew Napolitano: "The president of the United States using foreign governments to influence domestic politics -- that was the fear of the framers when they put that impeachment clause in the Constitution."
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To be clear, none of the above is especially new. Hannity has been the staunchest of staunch Trump backers for years, while more establishment conservative figures like Napolitano and Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace have established reputations as bastions of rationality amid the surrounding sea of MAGA on their network.
But the juxtaposition between Monday’s versions of Cavuto and Hannity illustrates the split that Trump’s abuse-of-power scandal and the growing support for Trump’s impeachment has wrought at Fox News. The network has spent years serving as something akin to an unofficial arm of the Trump campaign, but it reportedly has started thinking about life after Trump, at least behind the scenes.
The split between daytime and primetime burst into public view
While Fox News has a well-earned reputation for riding the Trump train, network personalities like Napolitano and Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace haven’t been shy about occasionally criticizing Trump. But now, with a presidency seemingly on the line, the stakes are a bit higher.
Primetime hosts like Hannity and Tucker Carlson along with Fox & Friends are still doing everything possible to spin for the president — including, in Carlson’s case, devoting part of Monday’s show to pushing conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton — but any criticisms of Trump made elsewhere on the network are increasingly being interpreted as veiled shots at other Fox News personalities. For instance, Wallace went viral last Thursday for sounding off about the “astonishing” and “deeply misleading” talking points being used by Trump’s defenders in the wake of the whistleblower report that accused Trump of abusing his office during his dealings with Ukraine.
Aaron Rupar
@atrupar
Here's Fox News' Chris Wallace saying that "the spinning that's been done by the president's defenders over the last 24 hours since this very damaging whistleblower complaint came out ... [is] not surprising but it is astonishing and I think deeply misleading." ??
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Trump — who has been slowly souring on Fox News for weeks now, in part because it won’t rig polls for him — indicated on Sunday that he’s especially sensitive to even the mildest criticism coming from network personalities. After chief national correspondent and occasional Fox & Friends host Ed Henry did an interview with right-wing pundit Mark Levin in which Henry gently pushed back on Levin’s pro-Trump talking points, Trump became so incensed that he started retweeting any and all anti-Henry tweets he could find, including one posted by a parody account that makes fun of him for disliking sharks.
Aaron Rupar
@atrupar
Replying to @atrupar
The President of the United States retweeted a parody account that makes fun of him for disliking sharks
Notably, however, Trump has had nothing to say about Wallace’s remarkably hard-hitting interview with White House adviser Stephen Miller on Fox News Sunday a few hours later — one in which Wallace demolished Miller’s talking points and wouldn’t let him get away with deflections that are standard fare on Hannity.
Aaron Rupar
@atrupar
Replying to @atrupar
"This is an exercise in obfuscation" -- Stephen Miller has no response when Chris Wallace presses him about why Trump went against his own Pentagon & State Department and withheld Ukrainian aid
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(Trump has posted many tweets over the years praising Wallace but attacked him for interviewing Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg in May, writing, “Fox is moving more and more to the losing (wrong) side in covering the Dems ... They forgot the people [who] got them there. Chris Wallace said, ‘I actually think, whether you like his opinions or not, that Mayor Pete has a lot of substance ... fascinating biography.’ Gee, he never speaks well of me — I like Mike Wallace better.)”
Again, Wallace conducting a tough interview with a Trump administration official is far from unprecedented. But the split between Fox News’ daytime and primetime burst into public view last week when afternoon host (and arguably the network’s most outspoken Trump critic) Shepard Smith feuded for two days with Tucker Carlson, a primetime host who, like Hannity, reliably defends the president. The conflict erupted after Smith’s show featured commentary from Napolitano last Tuesday in which he suggested Trump’s dealings with Ukraine amounted to crimes.
Carlson fired back that night by giving former prosecutor and frequent Fox News primetime guest Joseph diGenova a platform to bash Napolitano, calling him “a fool.” Smith responded the next day by characterizing diGenova as “a partisan guest” and criticizing Carlson for not defending his colleague. According to Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman, thefeud only came to an end after network brass admonished Smith to stop attacking Carlson or risk losing his show.
If Sherman’s reporting is correct about Carlson effectively winning that feud, he and diGenova weren’t able to savor it for long. In yet another stark illustration of how complicated the dynamic at Fox News has become, Wallace reported on the same edition of Fox News Sunday in which he interviewed Miller that diGenova has been “working off the books” with Giuliani to help Trump dig up dirt on Joe Biden — a revelation diGenova has since admitted to. And yet Wallace, while breaking that news, failed to mention that despite his secret work for Trump, diGenova and his wife, Victoria Toensing, have made over 90 Fox News appearances this year alone.
Fox News execs are reportedly tiring of Trump’s act — but you wouldn’t know it from watching the product yet
The split that erupted in front of cameras last week reportedly reflects behind-the-scenes tensions. In his Vanity Fair piece, Sherman reports that Lachlan Murdoch, eldest son of Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch, has recently “been holding strategy conversations with Fox executives and anchors about how Fox News should prepare for life after Trump.”
Those conversations have apparently been expedited by the whistleblower complaint and the broader abuse-of-power scandal, which Sherman reports that even Hannity is concerned about:
Sean Hannity told friends the whistle-blower’s allegations are “really bad,” a person briefed on Hannity’s conversations told me. (Hannity did not respond to a request for comment). And according to four sources, Fox Corp CEO Lachlan Murdoch is already thinking about how to position the network for a post-Trump future. A person close to Lachlan told me that Fox News has been the highest rated cable network for seventeen years, and “the success has never depended on any one administration.” (A Fox Corp spokesperson declined to comment.)
But whatever private concerns Hannity has, they haven’t yet manifested themselves on his show, which remains all Trump talking points all the time — even if he seems to be a little less enthusiastic about the act than he used to be.
Aaron Rupar
@atrupar
Replying to @atrupar
I gotta say, Hannity's heart doesn't really seem to be in this
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If Sherman is right about network brass siding with Carlson instead of Smith, that indicates that higher-ups aren’t dismounting the Trump train just yet. Ultimately, viewers will know that Fox News is really changing when primetime hosts either start criticizing the president or are replaced with hosts who will — and we aren’t anywhere near that point yet.
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mma 1019
As the last credible journalist to have a daily show on Fox News, Shep Smith probably should have resigned a long time ago. The network has been a right-wing propaganda network for years, and under Trump has turned into regime TV. On Friday, he finally did resign, and initial reports have indicated that his actions were driven by how bad the network has gotten.
Smith's resignation comes shortly after Fox News executives reportedly sided against him in an on-air feud with Fox News host Tucker Carlson over the seriousness of Trump's behavior in regards to Ukraine. In the end, Carlson said thatSmith was giving partisan opinion and not news. The entire episode was extremely telling: Tucker Carlson portrayed Smith's show -- at first implicitly and then explicitly -- as leftist fake news, much the same way he does nightly with CNN and MSNBC, even teaming up with close Trump ally Joseph diGenova. And Fox News executives were fine with it.
Smith's departure is a disaster for Fox News. As Media Matters' Matt Gertz wrote in the wake of Smith's announcement, "Smith’s willingness to push back against the misinformation rampant elsewhere on the network had made him extremely valuable to Fox. It provided the network’s executives with a fig leaf they could wave whenever critics argued that Fox was nothing more than a propaganda apparatus on behalf of the president and his allies. That fig leaf is gone. Fox belongs to the Seans Hannity and Lous Dobbs. And now, everyone knows it."
Gird your loins: Fox News is about to get even worse.
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SHEPARD SMITHShepard Smith quit Fox News right after Trump AG Bill Barr met with Rupert MurdochXENI JARDIN
https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/life-after-trump-paul-ryan-is-now-embarrassed-by-the-president-and-is-pushing-fox-news-to-dump-the-him
report describes the behind-the-scenes crisis emerging at Fox, which has been thrown into turmoil as the Democrats’ rapid impeachment push knocks the network off-kilter. Most dramatically, that disruption has played out in an on-air feud between hosts Shep Smith and Tucker Carlson. Sherman found that Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott and President Jay Wallace felt compelled to intervene and tell Smith to back off, though a spokesperson for the network denied this claim.
The report continued:
The ultimate referee of this fight will be Lachlan Murdoch. In recent months, Rupert’s oldest son has been holding strategy conversations with Fox executives and anchors about how Fox News should prepare for life after Trump. Among the powerful voices advising Lachlan that Fox should decisively break with the president is former House speaker Paul Ryan, who joined the Fox board in March. “Paul is embarrassed about Trump and now he has the power to do something about it,” an executive who’s spoken with Ryan told me. (Ryan did not return a call seeking comment.) But a person more sympathetic to Trump has told Lachlan that Fox should remain loyal to Trump’s supporters, even if the network has to break from the man.
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/longtime-fox-news-producer-i-cant-tell-you-how-unpopular-trump-is-here/
no lnx
Longtime Fox News producer: ‘I can’t tell you how unpopular Trump is here’
Written by Dana Kennedy / DC Report September 12, 2019
Does Fox News need President Donald Trump? Or does President Trump need Fox News? If former Fox News strongman and Trump supporter, the late Roger Ailes, were still running the network, those questions might never come up.
But as Trump himself tweeted in June after Fox reported that Trump was trailing five presidential candidates in the polls, “Something weird is going on at Fox News.”
True enough – and Trump seems unable to stop it. And it’s not just that his longtime ally Rupert Murdoch turned the leadership of Fox over to his son Lachlan last year. “I can’t tell you how unpopular Trump is here,” a longtime Fox News producer told DCReport, “and people are getting bolder about saying so.”
The soap opera within a soap opera at Fox News isn’t hurting ratings. Far from it. Even though Trump began criticizing Fox back in January, which in turn kicked up bitter in-fighting between Fox’s on-air talent and producers,FNC was the most-watched basic cable network in America for the 34th week in a row the week of Aug. 26, TVNewser reported.
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Compared with the same week one year ago, Fox was up 6% but MSNBC and CNN were down 24% and 21%, respectively.
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“Trump’s base has been with Fox News longer than they’ve been with Trump,” veteran TV critic Bruce Fretts (TV Guide, Entertainment Weekly), told DCReport.
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‘Loyal to Fox, Not Trump’
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“They’re still probably going to vote for Trump but their real loyalty is to Fox. Trump still needs Fox to speak to his base. So he’s got to either bite the bullet and say these are my guys—or totally shoot himself in the foot.”
But for now, Trump’s strategy is to increase the potshots at his once-favorite network.
“Sharpiegate,” the inane media storm over an actual hurricane that Trump furiously insisted all week could have hit Alabama, is the latest presidential debacle to further divide not just the country–but the once-faithful at Fox.
In recent months, longtime FNC anchors Shepard Smith and Neil Cavuto have broken rank spectacularly with what Smith calls “Trumplandia” while Fox’s pro-Trump (and prime-time) stalwarts, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, the network’s biggest moneymakers, along with Jeanine Pirro and Lou Dobbs, have defiantly backed him.
At the end of August, even Fox’s longtime political analyst and frequent Trump supporter Brit Hume fired back at Trump after Trump ripped the network for hiring left-wing panelists like former DNC chair Donna Brazile and Juan Williams.
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“The New Fox News is letting millions of GREAT people down!” Trump tweeted. “We have to start looking for a new News Outlet. Fox isn’t working for us anymore!”
Tweeted Hume in response, “Fox News isn’t supposed to work for you.”
Last week, Fox’s White House correspondent John Roberts got dragged into the middle when he was summoned to the Oval Office after his afternoon live shot. According to an internal Fox email from Roberts that was obtained by CNN, Trump wanted Roberts to acknowledge that the original forecasts for Hurricane Dorian “had Alabama in the warning cone.” CNN also quoted a White House aide privy to the meeting saying that Trump called Roberts in to “hit back at Shepard Smith.”
Doctored Hurricane Map
Earlier that same day, a visibly disgusted Smith lit into Trump over both his refusal to admit he was wrong about Alabama being in the path of Dorian–and for whipping out a clearly doctored hurricane map during a White House briefing Tuesday.
“Why would the president of the United States do this?” Smith said. “He decries fake news that isn’t and disseminates fake news that is. Think China pays the tariffs. The wall is going up. Historic inauguration crowds. The Russia probe was a witch hunt. You need an ID to buy cereal. Noise from windmills causes cancer. It’s endless!”
Smith may not be Fox News’ highest-rated personality but he is among the most respected at the network and his relentless fact-checking of Trump carries considerable weight.
“There’s a real downside to being in the tank for Trump,” said Fretts. “Fox News went all-in on him at first. They thought hey, this guy we propped up got elected—and we can exploit this power. Then Ailes, Bill O’Reilly and Bill Shine were brought down but it was too late. They had created a monster. And now those with some integrity at the network, like Shep and Cavuto, are distancing themselves bigtime and calling Trump out.”
Last spring, Trump began threatening to look for “another network” and repeatedly cited One America News Network, a relatively tiny right-wing news network based out of San Diego possibly best-known for hiring a young Tomi Lahren to host a talk show right out of college.
OANN, launched in 2013, has been relentless in their favorable coverage of Trump.The Washington Post reported in 2017 that “On One America newscasts, the Trump administration is a juggernaut of progress, a shining success with a daily drumbeat of achievements.”
Oddly, Charles Herring, president of OANN, was less than effusive when discussing Trump in both a telephone conversation and email with DCReport.
“Since 2015, before Mr. Trump announced that he was running for President, the network has been aware that Mr. Trump is an avid viewer,” Herring said.
“Our mission has not changed since the inception of the network and has not been influenced by our Presidents since launch. One America News Network appreciates the support from all of our viewers.”
Editor’s Note: Dana Kennedy is a former Fox News anchor, as well as a former reporter for MSNBC, CNN and ABC News.
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/something-is-wrong-fox-news-host-shep-smith-exposes-major-holes-in-trumps-iran-story/
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‘Disingenuous and deceptive’: Fox News’ Shep Smith meticulously rips apart Kushner’s dismissal of Russian inference in 2016 election
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mma 3/19
Over the years, Fox News anchor Shep Smith has been has been one of few figures at the network to criticize Donald Trump and debunk right-wing lies. And oftentimes, his criticism prompted positive coverage of him and his employer. This sequence is Fox's public relations strategy. As Media Matters'Matt Gertz explained, "Smith doesn't have his job despite his deviations from the Fox lines — he is supremely valuable to the network because of them."
While Fox's ability to maintain viewership relies on stoking the fears of its audience, its public relations strategy relies on the network's ability to demonstrate some level objective reporting. Consequently, as advertisers become increasingly cautious about advertising on Fox because of its fearmongering, network executives rely ever more on "news" team anchors like Smith to maintain credibility.
So, on Sunday, March 17th, when Donald Trump tweeted that Shep Smith is Fox's "lowest rated anchor" and "should be working" at CNN, Fox's public relations strategy took full effect. The president's criticism spurred significantcoverage and praiseof Smith, and provided network executives with the semblance of credibility it needed.
Shep Smith cannot undo the damage that others at Fox News do on a daily basis. At Fox News, Smith is nothing more than the Washington Generals, destined to lose again and again to the propagandists at the network. As The Washington Post's, Erik Wemple explained, "Nothing that Smith says during his Fox news program — no matter how sick his burns on Trump might be — neutralizes the impact of Dobbs or Sean Hannity or Tucker Carlson or dozens of other Fox talking heads. Nothing. Episodic truth-telling about Trump doesn't excuse fulsome conspiracy-theorizing about Trump."
Smith's value to Fox News is singular: He provides an illusion of credibility that the network uses to lure advertisers back to the network.
Also: Fox "news side" anchor Shannon Bream was scheduled to keynote a fundraiser for a Koch linked group alongside the Republican governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis. After Media Matters reported on her appearance, Bream suddenly "had to cancel." She was replaced by a Wall Street Journalcolumnist.
Finally: The Republican National Committee, Fox News opinion, and Fox News "news side" teamed up to push a distortion of a Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) quote about immigrants and Social Security. As Parker Molloy details, this is the perfect distillation of how all three elements work as cogs in the right-wing propaganda machine.
https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/03/19/how-fox-news-uses-news-side-anchors-shepard-smith-save-its-brand/223174
Trump, Fox News’ most powerful viewer, wants his supporters to know that he doesn’t like network anchor Shepard Smith.
On Sunday afternoon, Trump tweeted that Smith is Fox’s “lowest rated anchor” and “should be working” at CNN, the network the president frequently attacks for failing to provide the obsequious coverage he expects from the press. Trump regularly watches Fox’s programming and often praises other network figures, like Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro. His criticism of Smith stood out, spurring media coverage and praise for the Fox anchor from some journalists.
The president’s comments marked the second time in a week that the contrast between Smith and his Fox colleagues had driven headlines. Receiving an award on Wednesday night, Smith said in his acceptance speech that the primary mission of journalism is to be “accurate and honest and thorough and fair.” “We must never manipulate or invent,” he added. “We must never knowingly deceive. Because to do so is a disservice to our audience and potentially injurious to our society.”
Coming from another journalist, these words might have seemed like platitudes. But because Smith’s employer is a propagandistic misinformation factory, it was unsurprising that an observer like CNN’s Brian Stelter described the speech as a “subtweet” of the Fox stalwart’s “opinion side colleagues.”
These two divergences from the Fox norm are not unusual for Smith. Unlike other Fox “news side” figures like Bret Baier, Smith has actually earned his reputation as a solid journalist, regularly pushing back against right-wing lies propagated elsewhere on the network and at times his colleagues. That makes it easy for some commentators to fall into the trap of thinking of Smith as Fox's "voice of reason,” the resistance inside Fox to the network’s depredations and chicanery.
But Smith doesn’t have his job despite his deviations from the Fox line -- he is supremely valuable to the network because of them. Fox’s core business model depends on stoking the fears of its viewers to keep them coming back, but its public relations strategy relies on being able to point to people like Smith as evidence that the network isn’t purely a right-wing megaphone. Instead, the network brass argues, Fox simply has separate “news” and “opinion” divisions like other outlets.
The result is a mutually beneficial relationship in which Fox showers Smith with wealth in return for priceless PR value. In 2007, the network signed Smith to a contract that reportedly paid him more than $7 million a year. At the time, that salary was greater than that of anyone at CNN and on par with those of broadcast network evening news anchors, who historically command bigger paydays.
A New York Times write-up of his contract is filled with tropes familiar to present-day Fox observers: A Fox executive praises Smith for his focus on “hard news,” not opinion, and the Timesreporter contrasts that approach with other network programming and highlights criticism Smith receives from the right because of his willingness to contradict conservative bromides.
Smith has repeatedly renewed his contract at Fox since then (in 2013, he lost his 7 p.m. show and gained the role of breaking news anchor), most recently in 2018. The terms of that deal were not disclosed, but given how much he was being paid in 2007, it is likely that he’s drawing an eight-figure salary.
That figure seems absurd for someone who anchors the 3 p.m. hour on a cable news network and whose show was drawing just 1.6 million viewers at the time he signed his latest contract. But Fox is getting much more than the host for a weekday afternoon block for its money. The news of Smith’s new contract brought glowingcoverage highlighting Smith’s independence and burnishing the network’s brand, from, among others, Timemagazine:
As Fox has tacked further to the right in its opinion programming, Smith’s role has at times seemed like a challenge. Being the old-fashioned anchorman and reporter at a network known for new-fashioned provocation and opinion may be the hardest job at Fox News, and one Smith mused about walking away from over the course of two interviews this winter. On March 15, the network announced Smith would stay and that he had signed a multiyear contract renewal. Which means Smith is going to have many more chances to tell viewers what they don’t want to hear.
Copy like this tells Time’s readers -- including reporters, advertisers, and other elites who may not come into contact with Fox on a regular basis -- exactly what Fox wants them to hear: that the network has a “news side” stocked with legitimate journalists trying to tell the audience the truth.
What it ignores, however, is that Smith’s efforts to debunk misinformation found elsewhere on the network may break through as viral media stories, but they are buried at Fox itself under the weight of falsehoods and conspiracy theories from its higher-profile stars.
When Trump lashes out at Smith, he is helping Fox make its case. When Smith appears to criticize his prime-time colleagues while accepting a journalism award, he is too. And Fox needs the help right now -- this week’s Smith stories came out against the backdrop of firestorms involving the bigoted comments of two different network stars and desperate efforts to keep advertisers from fleeing.
Smith can keep using his 3 p.m. show to debunk the lies his network airs around the clock. He can call out the conservative hosts who receive bigger platforms and better time slots from Fox. He can tell reporters -- and even himself -- that the real reason he keeps signing Fox’s lucrative contracts is because he’s worried about what the network would replace him with.
What Smith apparently can’t do is keep Fox from treating “accurate and honest and thorough and fair” journalism as anything more than a PR strategy.
https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/here-are-4-political-wild-cards-on-fox-news-who-have-actually-stood-up-to-gop-propaganda/
One of the most Orwellian mottos in the history of cable news is undoubtedly “fair and balanced,” which was Fox News’ motto until 2017 (when it was replaced with “most watched, most trusted”). Clearly slanted to the far right, Fox News was never known for its fairness or its balance. A more honest motto for Fox News would be “all conservative all the time.” But in one sense, Fox News has been as unfair to conservatives as it has been to liberals and progressives: it tends to dictate how they should think.
Realistically, no one expects Fox News to treat liberals and progressives—or even centrists—fairly. That isn’t their market or their audience. But the most frustrating thing of all is Fox News’ expectation that conservatives think a certain way. During the George W. Bush years, right-wingers who were critical of the Bush administration were routinely demonized at Fox News (former Rep. Ron Paul, for example). And in the Donald Trump era, the vast majority of coverage at Fox News is overtly pro-Trump.
Nonetheless, Fox News will, on occasion, feature some people on the right who are genuinely analytical and don’t simply recite official Republican Party talking points. Here are some of the less dogmatic right-wing voices at the cable news outlet.
1. Chris Wallace
Republicans who appear on Fox News typically receive softball questions from most of the employees, but a major exception is Chris Wallace (the 71-year-old son of the late Mike Wallace). Wallace can be a combative interviewer, and Stephen Miller (a Trump senior advisor) got a first-hand demonstration of that this month when Wallace grilled him unmercifully about Trump’s emergency declaration on the U.S./Mexico border. And Wallace was no less combative with AM talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, calling him out on Feb. 17 for giving Trump a pass on executive orders despite having repeatedly lambasted President Barack Obama for executive overreach.
Wallace told Limbaugh, “I understand that you like what President Trump is doing, and you didn’t like what President Obama was doing. And that’s the concern here, is that to the degree you give the president more and more powers—yes, you’re going to get things from one president you like, but you’re going to get executive powers from another president that you don’t like.”
2. Judge Andrew Napolitano
During George W. Bush’s years as president, Fox News’ coverage was overtly favorable to the Patriot Act and other post-9/11 legislation. But unlike Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Judge Andrew Napolitano was never a robotic mouthpiece for the Bush Administration. Napolitano, alibertarian, considered the Patriot Act unconstitutional, and philosophically, he had a lot more in common with Ron Paul or 2012/2016 Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson than he did with former Vice President Dick Cheney.
In the Trump era, Napolitano has continued to serve as a legal analyst for Fox News, and the contrast between Hannity and Napolitano can be shocking. Hannity, a Trump sycophant, has jumped through hoops to defend Trump’s decision to make an emergency declaration to force funding of a U.S./Mexico border wall. But Napolitano, in contrast, considers the move unconstitutional.
When the judge appeared on “Fox and Friends” on January 8, he explained that an “emergency declaration allows him to mobilize assets, but it doesn’t allow him to take or occupy property. And it doesn’t allow him to spend money that Congress hasn’t authorized.” Napolitano has also asserted that bypassing Congress to fund a border wall is not the action of a president, but a “prince.”
3. Lisa Kennedy Montgomery
Gen-Xers still think of Lisa Kennedy Montgomery as “Kennedy from MTV”: back in the 1990s, she was an MTV veejay. But these days, the 46-year-old Montgomery is primarily focused on politics—and she is more likely to comment on Robert Mueller’s Russia probe or GOP tax policy than on Pearl Jam, Courtney Love or the Stone Temple Pilots. Politically, Montgomery is definitely right of center. But despite being a registered Republican, Montgomery has a lot more in common with the Libertarian Party than she does with Hannity. Montgomery is pro-choice on the abortion issue, supports same-sex marriage, dislikes the Christian Right and opposes the War on Drugs. But Montgomery (who hosts “Kennedy Nation” on the Fox Business Channel and often appears on Fox News’ “Outnumbered”) is also a hardcore fiscal conservative who opposes universal health care, calls Seattle a “socialist hellhole” and favors privatizing Social Security and Medicare—or, as liberals and progressives accurately call it, letting banksters bleed those programs dry.
4. Shepard Smith
Shepard Smith infuriated his most buffoonish colleague at Fox News, Sean Hannity, when, in 2017, he debunked the Uranium One/Hillary Clinton conspiracy theory that Hannity and President Trump were happy to promote. According to the theory, Clinton was bribed to approve the merger of the mining company, Uranium One, and the Russian nuclear energy organization Rosatom when she was secretary of state under President Barack Obama. The bribes, conspiracy theorists claimed, included $145 millionto the Clinton Foundation. But Smith totally tore apart this conspiracizing — noting that the FBI, after an extensive investigation, found that there was no evidence of bribery. Further, Smith noted, Clinton didn’t personally approve the merger herself.
“The Clinton State Department had no power to approve or veto that transaction,” Smith noted. “It could do neither.”
The backlash against Smith was swift, with some Fox News viewers asserting that he belonged at MSNBC or CNN instead. And in an interview with Time Magazine’s Daniel D’Addario, Smith distanced himself from Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson and other “opinion programming” at Fox News.
Smith told D’Addario, “I get it that some of our opinion programming is there strictly to be entertaining. I get that. I don’t work there.” And Hannity was furious, describing Smith as “clueless” and “anti-Trump.”
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ipcc report 10/8/18 check coverage 12 yrs
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new report issued by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change this week warned that if immediate and unprecedented action is not taken, the dire consequences of global warming will start to take effect within the next 20 years.
The landmark report dominated the environmental news beat this week, but its impact was not reflected in mainstream media coverage.
Unsurprisingly, Fox Newsdid not cover the report until late Monday afternoon, whenShep Smith spent a few minutes on the topic, saying, “climate change is real, the situation is urgent, and time is running out. That's the new warning from a landmark United Nations report." Smith’s reporting was quickly watered down with correspondent Trace Gallagher describing the goals laid out in the U.N. report as “really unreasonable” and “draconian.”
While most TV networks are notoriously terrible when it comes to covering the real-life causes and impacts of climate change, Fox News stands out among the worst offenders. The network has spent years telling its viewers that global warming is a hoax. They have devoted coverage to undermining climate science across its platforms -- in 2012, the Union of Concerned Scientists found that 93% of Fox News' representations of climate science were misleading.
Fox was not alone in ignoring the climate report: 28 of the top 50 U.S. newspapers made no mention of it on their homepages, including 10 that serve cities listed among the "25 U.S. Cities Most Affected by Climate Change."
The predictions offered in the report would likely affect every American, but the media is largely unwilling or unable to dedicate substantive coverage to climate change and related environmental news. While there is clearly a hunger for climate change reporting--particularly on the responses and solutions to this global crisis--coverage is lacking, if not downright misleading, across every network.
Watch this: Fox News has spent years telling viewers that climate change is not real. We juxtaposed those lies with the dire warnings from the new climate report.
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