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Last Updated: Jun 17, 2009 - 11:05:47 AM |
I'm just imagining the nasty
looks he must have gotten from co-workers -- if any of them even agreed
to ride between floors with him -- on the day that liberal New York
Times columnist Paul Krugman praised Smith in print. Krugman actually
referenced him by name as somebody inside Fox News who refused to go
along with the "big hate": the right wing's anti-Obama rhetoric --
almost bloodlust -- that now dominates conservative discourse.
Talk about putting a target on the back of a Fox News anchor. A
shout-out from the hated Times op-ed page? Things only got worse for
Smith over the weekend when the Times' Frank Rich also singled out the
Fox News anchor for praise. I mean, c'mon. Were Krugman and Rich trying
to get the guy fired?!
In fact, even before being name-dropped by Times liberals, right-wing
bloggers had already teed off on Smith ("Shep sucks"; "Shepard Smith
has got to go") for having the nerve to call out the "crazies" on the
fringe who were targeting President Obama and feeding off
conspiratorial hate.
The truth, of course, is that Smith's job isn't in danger. He's
considered an untouchable (ratings) golden boy within Fox News who has
the backing of his boss, Roger Ailes. (Not to mention a gargantuan $7
million salary.)
Yet by pushing back on the air against the same right-wing hatred that
others at Fox News now regularly foment, I wonder if Smith feels
increasingly uncomfortable or alienated within Fox News. If he feels
like a stranger within the cable news channel he's been with since its
inception, as it now rushes headlong into the GOP fever swamps and does
it with Glenn Beck, and his conspiratorial ranting, as the new face and
voice of Fox News.
I'm starting to wonder if Fox News is big enough for Shep Smith and
Glenn Beck.
For the past decade, Fox News brass offered up the same predictable
retort that the channel did news during the day and opinion after 8
p.m., and hey, there's nothing wrong with that. (Even if all the
opinion ran in one direction.) But now it's opinion in the morning with
Fox & Friends, it's opinion in the late afternoon with Glenn Beck
at 5 p.m., and opinion 24/7 with Fox Nation online, which mines the
territory of everything right of the Drudge Report.
Smith for years has publicly defended Ailes' credo of "fair and
balanced," but it's hard to see how the anchor believes it anymore, as
he watches the channel he works for actively rile up the right-wing
crazies. If Smith watches any of the other 22 hours of Fox News
programming that air each day when he's not in front of the camera, he
certainly understands that his employer probably represents the most
dangerous voice today when it comes to whipping up irrational hostility
toward the new president.
Since Smith has been at Fox News, its transformation has mirrored that
of the Republican Party. Meaning, back in the late 1990s, the GOP still
projected a semblance of a big tent party, and so did Fox News, which,
in its early days, often did a reasonable job of reporting the news and
keeping the wild partisan fever in check. Yes, it had an
anti-establishment chip on its shoulder, and Smith over the years has
been proud to display his, but it still performed a newsgathering
service.
It wasn't until the Florida recount in 2000, I think, that Fox News
went all in with the GOP and made a conscious decision to sever its
ties with traditional journalism. Since then, of course, whatever
journalism links remained were certainly cut during Fox News' unabashed
cheerleading of the Iraq war and unquestionably in the wake of the
Obama's inauguration, when Fox News rushed into the fever swamps.
In fact, Fox News now routinely apes the most radical and hateful
rhetoric found anywhere on the far right. Fox News, like the Republican
Party (or at least Rush Limbaugh's Republican Party) is now for true
believers only. Dissenting voices, such as Smith's, are no longer
welcome. Viewers prefer a drum-tight conformity and become incensed
when somebody veers off script, even for just two or three minutes. Fox
News is for those who think that Obama is a fascist, that he might not
be a natural-born citizen, and that he wants to take away your guns.
Basically, Fox News is for those who are convinced that Obama is
destroying America on purpose.
Whether consciously or not (its prime-time shows are run as hands-off
fiefdoms, so I doubt there's been internal coordination), Fox News has
positioned itself as the opposition party of the Obama White House. And
it's hard for anyone to make the serious claim that Fox News still
practices journalism as it's commonly defined or recognized. The
question then becomes, does Smith want to make his living being part of
the opposition party?
And a party led by Beck?
What started the latest fracas? In reporting on the immediate aftermath
of the Holocaust museum shooting, when it became known that the alleged
gunman was a lone-wolf white supremacist, Smith recalled that the
Department of Homeland Security had issued a report in April warning
about exactly that type of attack. It was a report that conservatives
universally condemned, claiming it targeted Obama's political opponents.
Last Wednesday, though, Smith stated the obvious:
[T]his is a former military guy and he's gone extremist. They were
warning us for a reason -- not about something political or social or
anything else. ... It was a warning to us all. And it appears now that
they were right.
In the eyes of Fox News' right-wing viewers, that was heresy. After
all, Fox News' own Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly had led
the charge in demonizing the DHS report, claiming it represented a
clear case of the Obama administration targeting (harassing?) everyday
Americans, even "moms that worry about massive debt," Beck warned
ominously. (The report, which was begun under the Bush administration,
was actually about skinheads and white supremacists, but that never
slowed Beck's attacks.)
Not only did Smith take part in some necessary truth-telling about the
DHS report, he then bemoaned the "more and more frightening" emails he
was receiving from conspiratorial "crazies" on the far right, who were
feeding off anti-Obama conspiracy theories, "feeding each other the
same bunch of hate that's not based in fact." Specifically, Smith
singled out the shut-ins (my phrase, not his) who claim Obama isn't a
natural-born citizen and therefore is ineligible to sit in the Oval
Office. That right-wing school of thought has been going strong for the
past year, and it turns out that the museum shooting suspect, James von
Brunn, was a loyal disciple of it.
"We know it's absolutely -- there is no truth whatsoever -- zero -- to
any of those ideas, yet they live within the computer and they fester
in people's minds," Smith lamented.
Smith has made news before with brief outbursts that ran counter to the
Fox News orthodoxy. (See here, here, and here.) But last week's
eruption seemed to strike a different chord because, indirectly, at
least, it pointed a finger of blame at Fox News and the hate rhetoric
it's been wallowing in.
Maybe Smith just doesn't like the new Glenn Beck direction that Fox
News is taking. The pushback might also be explained by some of the
internal politics within the Fox News executive suites. For instance,
former editorial czar John Moody was recently moved upstairs. It was
Moody who for years issued the daily Fox News marching orders in the
form of morning memos that laid out the day's talking points and which
stories the network would hit and which ones it would play down.
In Moody's place now, and overseeing editorial, is Jay Wallace, who
used to be an executive producer for Smith's show. Perhaps Smith now
feels less restricted in terms of network orthodoxy knowing his ally is
in charge and that he won't have to answer to a Moody email or phone
call regarding messaging. (Wallace is seen as being less rigid in terms
of FNC messaging.)
But what is still considered verboten within Rupert Murdoch's world is
criticizing other Fox News personalities on the air. And while Smith
did not name names last week with his tangent about "crazies" who are
still searching for Obama's birth certificate, it's quite obvious that
Fox News itself is guilty of pushing the "birther" conspiracy theory.
(And so is Limbaugh, which made his indirect attack on Smith last week
all the more telling.)
In truth, the Fox News big tent that Smith used to work for has
collapsed. And today, Beck is holding up the last remaining pole.
Where does Smith fit in?
Source:Ocnus.net 2009
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