Shepard Smith is striking back. In a new interview with PBS News, the former Fox News host revealed exactly why he left his long-standing post at the network and blasted the network and fellow colleagues for spreading “mis- and dis-information.”
In an interview set to air Tuesday night, Smith admitted to host Christine Amanpour that “I stuck with it as long as I could” in an attempt to uphold a responsibility to set the record straight on what the network chose to broadcast to its viewers.
“If you feel like the Fox viewers were getting mis- or dis-information, I was there to make sure that they got it straight,” Smith explained. “There were a lot of others in there who I thought were trying to do the same thing. But I thought to just abandon it, and to deprive those viewers of — it wasn’t just me, there was an entire team of people getting the news on the air — to deny them that, with the thought that they might replace it with opinion instead, seemed a little selfish. So I stuck with it as long as I could. And at some point, I realized I reached the point of diminishing returns and I left.”
“I stuck with it as long as I could,” says former Fox News host Shep Smith. But does he think some of his former colleagues spread disinformation? “I don’t know how some people sleep at night… There are a lot of people… who are smart enough and educated enough to know better.” pic.twitter.com/pqrOhVuKgR
— Christiane Amanpour (@amanpour) January 19, 2021
Prior to leaving Fox News in 2019 for a new show on CNBC, Smith had been a prominent fixture at the network — and a long-standing one at that, having joined in 1996.
The important question is: does this interview actually redeem Shep Smith in any way? Well, kind of. He did mention in the interview that he was “proud” of the journalistic work that he did and that he basically kept his blinders on so he could try to deliver the real news amidst all the twisted propaganda.
But perhaps more of a reason to consider redeeming the former Fox anchor is his pointed comment at his former colleagues that comes near the end of the clip. “I slept very well,” he told Amanpour. “I don’t know how some people sleep at night. Because I know there are a lot of people who propagated the lies and have pushed them forward over and over again, who are smart enough and educated enough to know better.”