Fox News is engaged in a civil war. Insiders say the conservative personalities behind the network’s biggest shows defending themselves after coming under attack from INSIDE the network.
Shepard Smith, the highly controversial left-leaning anchor of the network’s daytime news coverage, lashed out at his conservative colleagues last week.
“We serve different masters. We work for different reporting chains, we have different rules,” Smith told Time magazine. “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.”
Then, he really let loose.
Without mentioning network stars such as Sean Hannity by name, he pretty much called them all out.
“I get it 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,” he said. “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.”
That didn’t sit right with many at the network – and Smith is now suddenly on what he claims is a “previously planned” vacation.
Hannity later took to Twitter to defend his show, his staff and the work they do each night.
“While Shep is a friend with political views I do not share, and great at breaking news, he is clueless about what we do every day,” Hannity fired back on Twitter. “Hannity breaks news daily-Warrant on a Trump assoc, the unmasking scandal, leaking intel, Fisa abuse, HRC lawbreaking, dossier and more.”
As Hannity pointed out, his show isn’t simply “entertainment” or people who “yell at each other.”
It’s real news.
Another Fox News personality also defended herself from Smith’s attack.
“Always liked Shep, but his comments were inconsiderate & inaccurate,” Laura Ingraham wrote on Twitter.
She said her team does “real reporting” and “scores big interviews.”
It’s true: Ingraham’s interviews regularly break news and end up getting coverage from the mainstream. She’s had big scoops with Devon Nunes, Carter Page and more.
Like Hannity, she also seeks both sides of an issue, featuring interviews with left-wing Hollywood director and activist Rob Reiner as well as David Hogg, the young massacre survivor from Florida who is now a gun control activist.
Yet as far as Smith is concerned, this is just “entertainment” and “yelling.”
Smith’s claim would have merit if he would just report the news, which is supposedly what distinguishes his broadcast from the network’s commentary shows.
But he doesn’t.
In fact, Smith often provides his own commentary – and uses his platform to slam and belittle the president.
When Trump called for a military parade to honor the nation’s servicemen and women, Smith used his time as a “news” host to mock him for it.
“He could go see the tanks at a military base if he wanted to,” Smith said. “Or they could give him replicas. Little mini replicas. I mean, he wants to see what he has. I had some of those when I was a kid.”
He suggested someone from the military hand the toys to the president.
“You can get the little plastic ones and lay them out on the table and say, ‘Here you go,’” he said.
Smith has even disputed his own network’s coverage of major news, slamming Hannity and others for their groundbreaking reports on Hillary Clinton’s Uranium One scandal.
Many of these elements have been confirmed by the mainstream, but Smith did his best to play it down and cover it up.
And he’s hardly alone.
Hannity and others on the network have slammed the inaccurate reporting and “fake news” on other networks.
But Chris Wallace, the host of Fox News Sunday, has called them out over it, essentially protecting his friends in the anti-Trump mainstream media over his colleagues at Fox News.
“I don’t like them bashing the media, because oftentimes what they’re bashing is stuff that we on the news side are doing,” Wallace said last year, according to CNN. “I don’t think they recognize that they have a role at Fox News and we have a role at Fox News. I don’t know what’s in their head. I just think it’s bad form.”
Which side will win out?
As they say on TV… stay tuned!
— The Horn editorial team