Shep Smith Has the Hardest Job on Fox News
< < Go Back
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.
Smith says he’s unbothered by the divergence between his reporting and Fox’s opinion slate. “We serve different masters. We work for different reporting chains, we have different rules. They don’t really have rules on the opinion side. They can say whatever they want. If it’s their opinion. I don’t really watch a lot of opinion programming. I’m busy.”
Unlike some portion of the audience that reflexively switches on Fox News, Smith is disengaged by politics. “I get it,” he says, “that some of our opinion programming is there strictly to be entertaining. I get that. I don’t work there. I wouldn’t work there. I don’t want to sit around and yell at each other and talk about your philosophy and my philosophy. That sounds horrible to me.” He cites his values growing up: “You don’t talk about your money, you don’t talk about your politics, and you don’t talk about your sex. Right now, everyone wants to talk about those things, and I’m not one of them. Not going to do it.”
Smith isn’t the only anchor to profess a desire to avoid becoming the story, but his commitment to facts over feeling makes him an unusual fit for an era defined by news personalities.
More From TIME Magazine: