American Journalism Review Profiles Shepard Smith

Known more recently as the balanced part of the Fox News mantra, 'fair and balanced', Shepard Smith has been enjoying a lot of positive press, including from ourselves.  It certainly doesn't stop with the American Journalism Review, where Sherry Ricchiardi gives the high profile presenter another glowing profile in an article posted on the AJR's website.  The profile includes some real gems of journalism, something which you'd come to expect from the 'journalism review';

Smith loses patience with the notion that he is somehow tainted by what goes on during the 22 hours a day when he’s not on the air. “We make a conscious effort, every day, every moment, to separate straight news from opinion shows. I deliver straight news, that’s it. They do their thing, I do mine,” Smith says, irritated that the subject even came up.

“There is a perception from outside that we are just one thing, that this thing is soup. It’s not soup. If it were soup it would not work, we couldn’t have a newscast.”

On a segment of his newscast earlier this year, he appeared to be mocking Glenn Beck over a new Friday program being heavily promoted by Fox. It was all in good fun, he says. “Glenn came in and hugged me after and thanked me for the publicity,” Smith says. He compares the two main dimensions of Fox–news and punditry–to a family. It can be dysfunctional at times, “but at the end of the day we all love each other.”

For eight years, the voluble host of Fox’s “The O’Reilly Factor” has occupied an office next to Smith’s. “I’m trying to get him booted out. I’d like to put a Jacuzzi in there,” Bill O’Reilly quipped during a telephone interview in October. On a more serious note, he says there is no sharing of information or collaboration between Smith and pundits like himself. Asked about Shep’s takedown of Joe the Plumber during the presidential campaign, O’Reilly says, “It wouldn’t be something we would discuss.”

O’Reilly describes Smith as “a Southern guy who doesn’t take himself all that seriously. There’s a twinkle in his eye. He gets upset sometimes when he sees injustice. I like that. I think that’s needed… Basically, he is very accessible to the folks. The folks believe he’s one of them, not some anchorman from Mount Olympus.”

Read more here.

Acknowledgements: Inside Cable News