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Shepard Smith out at Fox News

Rexedgar said:
I think 2 years is common.
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I know some companies have 6 months to 1 year in the IT industry, but 2 years seems like it could be right for a news/political analyst/commentator. I can't see it being much more and viewed as "fair".
 
Smith was sick of the outright lies from the most popular Faux comentators

Faux has never been anything more than a right wing propaganda machine
 
Checkerboard Strangler said:
Rupert has ceded most control of FNC to his kids but he is still the CEO for now, and this disastrous master stroke of scorched earth policy is probably one of his last acts of office in a Hail Mary pass to Trump.
Sooner or later, he's going to kick the bucket, and his kids, who aren't liberal by any stretch, will call the shots 100%.
They're not liberals but they do not buy into their old man's worldview 100 percent. Maybe not even 50%.

Shep Smith being let out of his contract was probably the last favor the old man could do for the Donald.
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That's interesting.

If his kids become determined to turn FOX News into a proper outlet they will have to clean house. Those morning/evening personalities who play loose with facts in order to pervert truth for their fragile viewers have to go. Apparently, there has been a growing tension within FOX between staffers and anchors who seek to work a straighter news angle during the daytime and those opinion hosts who peddle right-wing propaganda during the morning and prime time hours. Trump has no problem with the Hannity lap dogs who have tremendous influence on their viewers. And personalities like Hannity have no problem with their own personal lack of integrity. This is why people like him get along so well with a man like Donald Trump. They know what they are doing to Americans and they don't care. They have betrayed their duties as so-called journalists and must be fired for it.

But that is not the worst of it. These people cling to broken and even dead ideologies as an identity. This is the ultimate problem that Conservatives throughout history consistently run into. Their personal needs to cling to traditions always leads them to a stubborn and chaotic place as history moves forward or comes to a transition era. This FOX and "fake news" crap involves yet another shattered ideology that they refuse to cope with:

- "Fair and balanced?"
- "FOX News tells the truth?"

We've seen Trump lash out at FOX this last summer for "heavily promoting the Democrats" and not "working for us anymore" whenever a host or guest violates the Republican party line. Apparently, FOX News can't even present a legitimate national poll without receiving written and verbal disgust from the President of the United States. Essentially, Trump has declared that facts and truth promote Democrats. What does that say to people who need their truths politically perverted? After this, viewers still choose to imagine a news outlet that is "fair and balanced?" They obviously shrug off the empirical evidence that clearly shows that they are easily manipulated by FOX propaganda. They dismiss such studies as "fake news" because the term serves as a defense mechanism, provided by the President of the United States. So, is Trump "fake news" now too? Trump has shattered this FOX News ideology that it "tells the truth" and still they tune in for the political comfort it provides. Therefore, if the kids start correcting FOX News delivery, the viewers will seek further right-wing media outlets for their political comfort. <---This would be the worst of it.

And for any faithful FOX News viewers reading this, who refuse to believe that this is a likely scenario, recognize that you people clung to birth certificate and Benghazi conspiracies for years and years. You people chose to be manipulated into arguments about tomato paste because "the left" want to steal your liberty. You people still can't quite come to reconciliation over Global Warming. Is it still just a liberal hoax or is Trump correct in that it is actually a Chinese hoax? You have chosen to be manipulated into ignoring Trump's latest national treachery with Ukraine (and others) by focusing on the long and widely debunked Biden conspiracies. The man is even doing it in the open now (because he got caught trying to keep it a secret), and you shrug. And if you still choose to believe that millions of illegals voted for Clinton in 2016, recognize that this false and widely debunked declaration came from far-right wing conspiracy outlets, presented to you through Donald Trump interviews and arbitrary Tweets, and made into stories by FOX News. In May 2018, it was reported that over half of Republicans still chose to believe this BS; and Trump has recently declared it again. Know why? Because he expects you to believe it. The man insults your intelligence daily because this is all he thinks of you. And you always deliver. For this, you will turn to further alt-right sources for your comfort. But I have a better idea. Remove your heads from your asses, discover the fresh air, and start thinking for yourself. You may discover that the GOP and the political Right elites have led you down a path of perfect stupidity.
 
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trixare4kids said:
Do you want to know why Shepherd Smith really left?
You leftists didn't support his cable ratings enough.
Happy now?
So cry me a river...
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Shep left because he had enough of the drooling, fake-news, 100% Trump propaganda of the network he had worked at since it was created. Others already had enough and left a while back, he stuck it out, and finally reached his breaking point.
He had been working on it for a few weeks with a good attorney who helped negotiate an agreeable out from his contract. Rather than face an ugly pubic dispute, Fox agreed.
Why Shep Smith finally walked out of Fox News for good - CNN
 
calamity said:
Yes, it’s a coincidence that Barr met with Murdoch and, the very next day, Shep quit.
:lamo
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As if somebody like Sheppy is of any importance to this administration ... :lamo


SG-tucker-carlson-vs-shepard-smith-ratings.jpg
 
Mach said:
Shep left because he had enough of the drooling, fake-news, 100% Trump propaganda of the network he had worked at since it was created.
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Yeah, it sounds like he has integrity. Clearly most conservative viewers are not going to find that acceptable. Their feefees need the lies of Trump, Carlson and Hannity.
 
MSgt said:
That's interesting.

If his kids become determined to turn FOX News into a proper outlet they will have to clean house. Those morning/evening personalities who play loose with facts in order to pervert truth for their fragile viewers have to go. Apparently, there has been a growing tension within FOX between staffers and anchors who seek to work a straighter news angle during the daytime and those opinion hosts who peddle right-wing propaganda during the morning and prime time hours. Trump has no problem with the Hannity lap dogs who have tremendous influence on their viewers. And personalities like Hannity have no problem with their own personal lack of integrity. This is why people like him get along so well with a man like Donald Trump. They know what they are doing to Americans and they don't care. They have betrayed their duties as so-called journalists and must be fired for it.
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It's not going to be easy and there's no assurance that Fox will disconnect from any political agenda or not.
The Murdoch kids are pretty much libertarian types, and while James might be more centrist, Lachlan is on the right.
But in the end, it boils down to ratings anyway.
The problem with their viewers is, they're not bringing in enough younger and upwardly mobile viewers, so their base, while loyal and certainly numerous, is declining in terms of spending because they're growing older and many are on the kind of limited fixed incomes that rule out expensive luxury purchases, which is why you're seeing so many adverts for gold and silver bugs, end of life planning, senior care, life insurance, bogus nutritional supplements and reverse mortgages.

You can only sell so many LED light bulb enhanced water purification filters and snuggies.
The Murdoch kids want to see Fox News enjoy the kind of active viewership that they get from The Simpsons, Futurama and Family Guy.
If that means a slow and gradual move to the center, then Fox has to do two or three things better than CNN and MSNBC, chief among them objectivity and scoops. Both moves mean hiring expensive talent in investigative journalism and more news crew availability in more spots on the globe.
That means spending more money on the network.

And it also means tearing themselves away from the personalities like Hannity, who will not make the transition, should there be one.
That means spending even more money, large chunks of it, to lure new talent with a guaranteed viewership.
 
Checkerboard Strangler said:
It's not going to be easy and there's no assurance that Fox will disconnect from any political agenda or not.
The Murdoch kids are pretty much libertarian types, and while James might be more centrist, Lachlan is on the right.
But in the end, it boils down to ratings anyway.
The problem with their viewers is, they're not bringing in enough younger and upwardly mobile viewers, so their base, while loyal and certainly numerous, is declining in terms of spending because they're growing older and many are on the kind of limited fixed incomes that rule out expensive luxury purchases, which is why you're seeing so many adverts for gold and silver bugs, end of life planning, senior care, life insurance, bogus nutritional supplements and reverse mortgages.

You can only sell so many LED light bulb enhanced water purification filters and snuggies.
The Murdoch kids want to see Fox News enjoy the kind of active viewership that they get from The Simpsons, Futurama and Family Guy.
If that means a slow and gradual move to the center, then Fox has to do two or three things better than CNN and MSNBC, chief among them objectivity and scoops. Both moves mean hiring expensive talent in investigative journalism and more news crew availability in more spots on the globe.
That means spending more money on the network.

And it also means tearing themselves away from the personalities like Hannity, who will not make the transition, should there be one.
That means spending even more money, large chunks of it, to lure new talent with a guaranteed viewership.
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They are already having trouble drawing top advertising dollar. This will only get worse as their demo moves into rest homes.
 
calamity said:
They are already having trouble drawing top advertising dollar. This will only get worse as their demo moves into rest homes.
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That's pretty much it.
Like all other 24 hr cable news channels, Fox has to chase ratings dollars, and in order to do that effectively they have to determine how to best cater to the viewer demographic with the most lucrative spending habits.

Rest home viewers don't spend very much money, and when they do, most of them spend on low budget items, if only because they may have already purchased most of the big ticket items a long time ago, or they've become unable to enjoy them any longer.

A seventy-eight year old might have already bought the gigantic 4K big screen TV, an RV and a backyard pool but if they developed severe macular degeneration, broke their hip and had a mild stroke, they aren't going to be buying more items like that ever again.
 
Ex-Fox News Reporter Issues Warning About Shep Smith’s Replacements

Cameron joined Fox News alongside Smith when it launched in 1996, and was its chief political correspondent until 2017. He’s since criticized the network’s “partisan misinformation.”

He wasn’t entirely surprised by Smith’s decision, he told Melber.

“It’s a big loss for Fox News channel and it says something about the way in which the cable channel has been for years shrinking the news department and building its right-wing entertainment hosts, ’cause that gets ratings and ratings gets revenue,” Cameron explained. “It’s a real sad day for people who watch Fox News and want accurate information because Shep was somebody you could reliably count on.”

“The executives know that this is a loss,” he added. “When Fox would say or do things that were demonstrably untrue, Shep would be the person that they would point to as a measurement of good journalism.”

“Tell that to Jennifer Griffin whose report just went viral this week,” a Fox News spokesperson said to HuffPost in a statement. “Or Chris Wallace, Bret Baier, Bill Hemmer, Martha MacCallum or Catherine Herridge who have all done outstanding journalism.”

Without Smith’s show, Cameron said, the majority of Fox’s programming is now “predominantly talk, it’s predominantly supportive of a president who is violating all kinds of American values, laws, rules, precedents, etc. ... and the American people need to hear that so they can make good judgments. Otherwise it’s just propaganda, and that’s the stuff of third-world nations, not the one that prides itself as leader of all nations.”
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Ex-Fox News Reporter Issues Warning About Shep Smith’s Replacements | HuffPost
 
Checkerboard Strangler said:
It's not going to be easy and there's no assurance that Fox will disconnect from any political agenda or not.
The Murdoch kids are pretty much libertarian types, and while James might be more centrist, Lachlan is on the right.
But in the end, it boils down to ratings anyway.
The problem with their viewers is, they're not bringing in enough younger and upwardly mobile viewers, so their base, while loyal and certainly numerous, is declining in terms of spending because they're growing older and many are on the kind of limited fixed incomes that rule out expensive luxury purchases, which is why you're seeing so many adverts for gold and silver bugs, end of life planning, senior care, life insurance, bogus nutritional supplements and reverse mortgages.

You can only sell so many LED light bulb enhanced water purification filters and snuggies.
The Murdoch kids want to see Fox News enjoy the kind of active viewership that they get from The Simpsons, Futurama and Family Guy.
If that means a slow and gradual move to the center, then Fox has to do two or three things better than CNN and MSNBC, chief among them objectivity and scoops. Both moves mean hiring expensive talent in investigative journalism and more news crew availability in more spots on the globe.
That means spending more money on the network.

And it also means tearing themselves away from the personalities like Hannity, who will not make the transition, should there be one.
That means spending even more money, large chunks of it, to lure new talent with a guaranteed viewership.
Click to expand...

I think they would save money by cutting loose the extremist personalities. Forbes, in 2018, estimated that Hannity's annual income was $36 million. When reporters and journalists are making that kind of money, they are being paid to sacrifice their journalistic integrity and encouraged to be political celebrities. The country is full of eager talent who has integrity and would take far less to do proper journalistic work.

The real question is what the viewers would do. Would they just follow FOX to a healthier place or reject the absence of political bias and extremism in favor of heading towards alt-right news? I'm shrugging on my end. But the pattern shows a GOP that created an irrational Conservative mob and then lost control when it found itself begging the constituents not to vote for Trump in 2016. Now they are afraid of their own President's hold over their voters. This is why the GOP is so afraid to criticize Trump even now. Plenty actually do blindly support him. But plenty of others are just petrified and are running off of false team spirit. So, I would put money on the viewers heading more towards InfoWars for their political comfort. After all, InfoWars is where the rumor of "millions of illegals" voting for Clinton began. And look how enthusiastic Conservatives were for that.
 
lurchadams said:
Chris Wallace pushed back against Stephen Miller's B.S. a couple of weeks ago. He's another one who hasn't totally sold out to the alt-right.
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I watched that when it was being broadcast. In addition to reminding me about how sleazy and disgusting Miller is, I was thinking about how honest Wallace is!
 
tres borrachos said:
I watched that when it was being broadcast. In addition to reminding me about how sleazy and disgusting Miller is, I was thinking about how honest Wallace is!
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Miller is a perfect Trumpian Fascist. Isn't he?
 
tres borrachos said:
I watched that when it was being broadcast. In addition to reminding me about how sleazy and disgusting Miller is, I was thinking about how honest Wallace is!
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His greatest asset to trump is that he's willing to lie, publicly in an obnoxious manner. Like Tapper once opined - when Miller's on TV, he's performing for an audience of one.
 
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