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Shepard Smith, Fox News Anchor, Abruptly Departs From Network Shepard Smith, Fox News Anchor, Abruptly Departs From Network
(32 minutes later)
Shepard Smith, the chief news anchor of Fox News whose reporting often drew the ire of President Trump, said on Friday that he was leaving the cable news network after 23 years, an abrupt move that left some of his co-workers openly stunned. To critics who accuse Fox News of being uniformly pro-Trump, the network often points to the blunt-truth reporting of Shepard Smith, its veteran chief news anchor, whose coverage of the Trump White House stood out on a channel known best for conservative opinion.
“Recently, I asked the company to allow me to leave Fox News,” Mr. Smith told viewers at the close of his regular broadcast. “After requesting that I stay, they obliged.” Starting now, Fox News will need to point to somebody else.
A fixture of Fox News, Mr. Smith joined the network as a correspondent at its start in 1996 and became one of its most visible journalists. He is leaving in the middle of his current contract, a rarity in the cutthroat television business, and he told viewers on Friday that, under his exit agreement, “I won’t be reporting elsewhere at least in the near future.” In an announcement that stunned colleagues, Mr. Smith concluded his Friday newscast by signing off from Fox News — for good. “Recently, I asked the company to allow me to leave,” Mr. Smith said calmly. “After requesting that I stay, they obliged.”
Since Mr. Trump took office, Mr. Smith has stood out at Fox News for his tough coverage of the White House — a stark contrast from the Trump cheerleading often displayed by the network’s prime-time and morning-show commentators. A member of the network’s founding staff in 1996, Mr. Smith became increasingly conspicuous at Fox News for his skepticism on President Trump. “Why is it lie after lie after lie?” Mr. Smith asked during a 2017 newscast; this summer, he deemed the president’s attacks on minority female lawmakers as “misleading and xenophobic.”
Mr. Smith’s reporting has sometimes frustrated Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly taunted the anchor on Twitter, referring to him as Fox’s “lowest rated anchor.” On Thursday, Mr. Trump cited Mr. Smith by name, along with the former Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, arguing that Fox News was “much different than it used to be in the good old days.” 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 anchor.” Other Fox News personalities were also unimpressed: Last month, Mr. Carlson openly mocked Mr. Smith on-air, a rare moment of intramural discord bursting into public view.
Mr. Smith was so prominent a target in the president’s harangues that speculation emerged that the anchor’s departure was related to a meeting this week between Rupert Murdoch, the mogul who controls Fox News, and Mr. Trump’s attorney general, William Barr.
[Read more about the meeting between William Barr and Rupert Murdoch.]
A spokesman for Mr. Smith, Chris Giglio, said there was no connection between that meeting and Mr. Smith’s exit from Fox News. “This was Shep’s decision and his alone,” Mr. Giglio wrote in an email.
Mr. Smith’s coverage of the White House had generated tension between the anchor and some of his colleagues in the network’s opinion division, which produces the right-wing programming that dominates Fox News prime-time and morning shows.
The tensions burst into open view last month as the impeachment inquiry was getting started. Mr. Smith denounced a guest on Tucker Carlson’s program for making “repugnant” comments about a Fox News legal analyst, Andrew Napolitano. Mr. Carlson fired back at Mr. Smith with a not-so-subtle suggestion of bias, saying, “Unlike maybe some dayside hosts, I’m not very partisan.”
[Read about on-air sniping at Fox News.][Read about on-air sniping at Fox News.]
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 Mr. Trump has often accused of having a liberal bias. The internal tensions had frustrated Mr. Smith, 55, who was dismayed at the disconnect between some of the pro-Trump cheerleading in prime-time and the reporting produced by the network’s newsroom, according to two people close to the anchor who requested anonymity to share his private observations. Mr. Smith had been considering an exit from Fox News for several weeks, the people said.
Several of Mr. Smith’s Fox News colleagues appeared shocked by Mr. Smith’s decision to depart. “I’m a little stunned and a little heartbroken,” the anchor Neil Cavuto, who follows Mr. Smith on weekdays, told viewers moments after Mr. Smith had concluded his 3 p.m. broadcast. It appeared that Mr. Cavuto had no advance warning of Mr. Smith’s decision. On Friday, in public at least, all parties played down any difficulties.
John Roberts, Fox News’s chief White House correspondent, called the move “completely shocking” and compared learning of the news to being “hit by a subway train.” “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.”
Mr. Smith has, at times, pointed out Mr. Trump’s false statements in the opening remarks of his program. In September, he criticized the president’s warning that Alabama was in danger from Hurricane Dorian. In a farewell statement, Jay Wallace, the network’s president and executive editor, called the anchor’s exit “especially difficult.”
“Some things in Trump-landia are inexplicable,” Mr. Smith said. “This week’s edition, the president’s ongoing claim that Alabama was at risk from Hurricane Dorian. It wasn’t. Maybe he got some bad info from somebody, maybe he made a mistake, maybe he was confused — we don’t know. But he was wrong. And since, for days and days, he’s been insisting, with fake visual aids in hand, that he was right.” Mr. Smith was familiar to viewers for his authoritative but genial Mississippi lilt. But one hint at the strain on Mr. Smith was his decision to leave 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 move is likely to cost him millions of dollars. Mr. Smith also agreed to abide by a noncompete clause, telling viewers, “I won’t be reporting elsewhere, at least in the near future.”
Carl Cameron, a Fox News reporter who left the network in 2017 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 have,” Mr. Cameron said in an interview on Friday. “We both would reassure ourselves that authentic, factual news was a way to distinguish ourselves in what was becoming an increasingly more and more partisan network.”
“God help the journalists at Fox hang in there, because they’re doing the right thing,” Mr. Cameron added.
With Mr. Smith’s exit, Fox’s news coverage will be led by other star nonpartisan anchors, including Bret Baier, the “Fox News Sunday” moderator Chris Wallace and Martha MacCallum. At a recent panel discussion in New York with advertisers, Ms. MacCallum defended the network’s journalism, saying pointedly of Mr. Trump, “Contrary to the opinion of some people, he’s not our boss.”
Fox 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 different than it used to be in the good 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 between Mr. Trump and Fox News is closely scrutinized — so much so that an alternate theory sprang up on social media on Friday about Mr. Smith’s abrupt exit.
Some wondered if Mr. Trump had orchestrated the departure of his least-favorite Fox News anchor through a private meeting this week between Rupert Murdoch, the mogul who controls the network, and Mr. Trump’s attorney general, William Barr.
[More on the meeting 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’s decision and his alone,” Mr. Giglio wrote in an email on Friday. “He’s taking an extended period of time off to be with his family. Following that who knows — he is not retiring.”
Mr. Murdoch is usually reluctant to make prominent personnel moves at his media properties because of public or private pressure. And Mr. Trump, asked at the White House on Friday if he had a connection to Mr. Smith’s exit, sounded surprised by the news.
“Did I hear Shepard Smith is leaving?” he asked reporters on the South Lawn. “Is he leaving because of bad ratings? Tell me, I don’t know.” He added: “I wish him well.”
“Shepard Smith Reporting,” the anchor’s 3 p.m. newscast, routinely beat rivals on CNN and MSNBC in the ratings and a key demographic, according to Nielsen. But Mr. Smith’s show, in a traditionally low-viewership time slot, had one of the smallest audiences of Fox News programs overall.
Mr. Smith’s exit negotiations were known to only a few senior figures at Fox News’s Manhattan headquarters, and several of his network colleagues were visibly shocked by his decision.
“I’m a little stunned and a little heartbroken,” the anchor Neil Cavuto, who follows Mr. Smith’s show on weekdays, told viewers moments after the anchor had announced his departure. Mr. Cavuto called himself “shellshocked” and had trouble finding his words at first.
John Roberts, Fox News’s chief White House correspondent, who also appeared on air moments after Mr. Smith’s announcement, called the move “completely shocking” and compared learning of the news to being “hit by a subway train.”
In his signoff on Friday, Mr. Smith ended his Fox News career with words that are likely to be read closely for any meaning between the lines.
“Even in our currently polarized nation, it’s my hope that the facts will win the day,” Mr. Smith said. “That the truth will always matter. That journalism and journalists will thrive. I’m Shepard Smith, Fox News, New York.”