Fox Anchor Shepard Smith Needs No Regrets

By James Donahue

If there is one bright face among all of the bad apples spewing out biased and unbalanced information at Fox News it has to be Shepard Smith who presents what we perceive to be among the better news shows generated on the U.S. cable networks.

After watching a 30-minute nightly news from 6:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. Eastern on either ABC, NBC or CBS, we used to jump to Fox to catch Smith’s one-hour news that ran from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. on weeknights. We did this because Smith reports on important events from around the world, he gives more in-depth coverage, and his reporting is, by-in-large, straightforward and unbiased. That he has an hour-long news slot obviously helps Smith cover more of the day’s news.

Recently, however, Smith has been moved to different time slots so we no longer see him. And we think we know why this is happening. He is out of place.

As an experienced news reporter who knows the difference between news and bologna, we often wondered how an anchor of Smith’s quality got mixed up among all of the weeds of non-journalism that seem to be turning Rupert Murdock’s media empire into a propaganda machine bent on wrecking President Obama’s vision for America.

Our opinion of Smith was recently reinforced when he publically apologized for the “lack of balance” in Fox News reporting after another Fox reporter presented a one-sided political interview involving a New Jersey race for elected office.

That Smith has backed down on that statement, recently telling the Washington Post that he regrets the apology, makes us think that pressure from high-level officials within the Murdock empire forced him to do it.

Since this is an age of voiced and written opinion we offer our view on the subject of all of the television talking heads spewing their subjective thoughts on just about every action and statement made in political circles. There is too much opinion and very little substance.

What is needed is serious and thorough non-bias reporting of events. Editorial commentary needs to be identified for what it is and presented in ways that separate it from the news.

Expose’s like we see on the Rachel Maddow show on weeknights can be healthy when the information is as carefully researched and presented as Maddow is doing it. She makes no bones about the fact that she is offering editorial opinion and going so far as to confront the people she is attacking head-on and face to face in front of the television cameras. Unfortunately, many of the people she zeros in on refuse to face her on public television. They choose, instead, to hide over at Fox where the environment is much more comfortable.