Outfoxed And Out At FOX

FOX News State TV anchor Shep Smith got tired of being the last news guy at the propaganda network, so Friday was his last show. CNN Media correspondent Brian Stetler lays out the tale:

Last month Shep Smith decided that he had simply had enough. 

With President Trump actively distorting the truth and many of his own colleagues helping him do it, the Fox News star prided himself on anchoring a newscast that countered the network's pro-Trump opinion shows. 

The way Smith saw it, he was making sure that accurate information was getting on Fox's air. 

"I wonder," he told a Time magazine reporter last year, "if I stopped delivering the facts, what would go in its place in this place that is most watched, most listened, most viewed, most trusted? I don't know." 

But he reached a breaking point. Sometime in September, according to a well-placed source, he went to Fox News management and asked to be let out of his long-term contract. Tensions with the opinion shows were getting to be too much. 

In late September, 8 p.m. host Tucker Carlson mocked Smith for standing up for his friend and colleague Judge Andrew Napolitano after the judge was called a "fool" by one of Carlson's guests. The network's lack of a vocal defense for Smith following the incident bothered him and the whole episode factored into his decision to leave, according to a person familiar with the matter. 

But that episode was just one of many skirmishes that weighed heavily on Smith. 

Executives at the network leaned on him to stay, but to no avail. On Friday afternoon he announced his departure on the air, then exited the building immediately, clearly emotional about saying goodbye to his television home of twenty years. 

Smith was a Fox News original. He didn't change over the years -- the network changed around him. 

For months I have been working on a book about Fox News in the Trump age. Staffers have been confiding in me about the challenges of covering the news inside a network that is increasingly defined by sychophantic pro-Trump personalities like Sean Hannity.
Staffers on the news side unanimously point to Smith as a role model. 

But "it was clear he wasn't happy, on air and off air," one of the staffers said after Friday's stunning resignation announcement. 

Two other staffers also said he'd indicated he "wanted to leave" -- meaning that he was not forced out by management, as some outsiders immediately speculated on social media. 

"I think it probably just got to be too much," one of Smith's allies inside Fox News headquarters said.

I don't really have much sympathy for anyone who chose to spend 20 years at the GOP's propaganda arm and suddenly realized they were never taken seriously by their own employer as a news anchor.  At best, Shep Smith was a beard, a mask to give FOX's right-wing noise machine credibility.

But that credibility, the last shred, I guess, is gone along with him.  There's zero doubt now that FOX News exists to further the GOP fascist stranglehold on this country and its people.

As with all the Never Trump converts, all I have is scorn for them.  You knew the damage you were doing, and you'd keep doing it as long as anyone other than Donald Trump was the face of the party.