News, throwing up his hands after months of tepgzs with foxs opinion shows. Shep had the power to speak truth, to provide a reality check to foxs viewers who hear protrump talking points all day long. But he wont be there anymore. His last day was friday. And i think this is bigger than fox. Its a sign of whats happening in america and to america. People sorting themselves into tribes. Tuning out inconvenient information. And right now this phenomenon is most intense on the right which is why shep smiths exit is a cultural moment and why its shaking up the journalists who are left at fox. One fox reporter saying she feels like shes been hit by a bus. Another saying the news is he t heartbreaking and saying, quote, i fear things are going to get much, much worse. Look, fox has some excellent journalists including one on the ground in syria right now. The journalists are feeling squeezed by the opinion and propaganda players. Lets talk with three former faces on fox. Starting with connor powell, he was a fox correspondent for nine years. Full disclosure, hes working for cnn news source. Democratic strategist a paid contributor on shows like the five for six years. And carl cameron, who was foxs chief Political Correspondent until 2017. Thank you all for being here. Julie, what are your friends at fox telling you about this news about shep . Theyre depressed. Theyre obviously shocked. A lot of them feel like the management isnt managing. It used to be when roger ailes was here, the inner warfare would never be seen on the air. Now that shep and Tucker Carlson have gone at each other, sean hannity had gone at shep, as well, a lot of them feel theyre not going to have their backs, theyre not going to be protected by the people in charge of the network in a way that would have happened before. They are anxious. They are depressed about the fact that the person they believed was their leader and trying to really have a journalistic ethos at fox is now gone. Theyre worried about who else may be going as a result of sheps departure. Theyre not necessarily journalists. Some are opinion people who feel this is a massive, massive loss for the network. All around, the few people ive spoken to, more than a few, the number of people ive spoken to have all been very depressed about this news. Nobody that i spoke to was highfiving. Thats more on the journalist sides of fox. There are detracktators that he had at fox. They said he was only on the hour an hour a day. He wasnt that much of a leader. I wonder, connor, if you agree. How important is this moment . For those of us are paid to be journalists, he was the direction for those of us journalists. His voice didnt always make it past his own show. Some shows ignored what he reported. At least day in and day out, his voice was on the channel, and he provided a lot of direction for those of us on the ground around the world in the United States trying to be reporters. You take away his voice, you take away his voice and his team around him which is crucial to the news organization, and im not sure what youre left with. I think youre probably just left with sean hannity and Tucker Carlsons voice. Im not sure thats particularly a good thing for the United States. Right now theres no indication that the producers are leaving, though. I hope they dont leave. Theres a lot of great correspondents at fox. Its just that my impression is they feel theyre not getting on the air very much because opinion shows are taking up Mother Nature and more time. Is that fair to say, carl . You were there until trumps inauguration. Yeah, no, i think its very true that the news department, the News Division has shrunk. And there are an awful lot of really good journalists at fox newschannel. Its just that theyre vastly outnumbered by the opinion makers. And the opinion makers are more interested in playing with peoples bias than anything else. And it makes it very difficult for journalists to actually give people honest facts when the airtime is shrinking constantly. And that 3 00 hour is critical. Shep now gone, what fox has said is they are going to be a rot e rotating series of hosts. F tho if those are people like bill hemm hemmer, hosts that do news, if theyre journalists, it will be a good sign for the 3 00 hour. If its not, if its opinion mavens, that will be another big chunk of real journalism that wont exist there. Yeah, and theres other hours, the rightwing conspiracy theories. Look at Jeanine Pirros show, she had President Trump call in for a softball interview last night. There was also a leftwing Conspiracy Theory out there about shep smith, and i want to debunk it. There was a reporter in the New York Times that Rupert Murdoch had a meeting with attorney general bill barr. They did meet, but it had nothing to do with smith resigning. Smith had been thinking about this for several weeks. I want to put that to rest. I do think it speaks volumes, though, people wonder is someone pulling the strings. Julie, people do legitimately wonder about the murdochs and their role in shaping fox news and bringing it further to the right. Theres no question. I dont know how much further it could go to the right. I think there are business interests the murdochs have that the president of the United States, they can benefit from that. As a result obviously being on the side of the president , helping the president helps their business interests. I think thats a business decision that theyve made. Having said that, i think theres an object sense of leadership at fox news. When i was there, carl, when you were there, i think whatever you thought of the leadership, there was a very strong person at the helm who was able to rein a lot of this in. I think today in the absence of what, what you have are people like Tucker Carlson and sean hannity running their own thiefdoms and not allowing others airtime. Ive spoken to people who are not democrats or liberals by any stretch of the imagination unless you think that truth has a liberal bias. These are people who are facts checking the president in realtime. Theyre seeing the airtrem cut off. Theyre not seeing as much access to the air as they used to have. They a business decision the murdochs are making. Its unfortunate because the fox news audience is not served well by having uncritical views of what the president is saying. Theres no dispute about the fact that the president doesnt and unless somebody says that on foxs air, theres no way the audience would know that. Thats unfortunate. Shep was very good at that. Julie, you did sue fox for harassment and retaliation. You mention the secondives in in charge. Do you have a personal axe to grinds against them . I have no personal axe to grind. The person i mentioned is no longer there as a executive, neither of the two are there as executives anymore, so i dont. This is purely from talking to people still at fox who feel strongly that roger ailes, whom i did sue, would never have allowed this to happen. This is a compliment to roger ailes i hear that quite a bit. Yeah. I hear that quite a bit. Can i you were going to jump in . Sorry, carl, go ahead. I think one of the things thats important to remember here is that over the years, there was not a history of fox opinion hosts criticizing the journalists. And over the course of the trump administration, more and more the opinion hosts have been criticizing the journalists. And so that really pits bias against straight journalism. I think julies pretty much nailed it. Thats a huge part of what frustrates the journalists at fox news because they shouldnt be arguing with people who are there to comment on the news and completely neglect what was just reported by the journalists. And a lot of fox critics say the journalists are complicit by staying at fox. The journalists tell me theyre just trying to make the network better, trying to too the right thing. Connor, last word to you. As someone who worked with shep, how did he make you a better journalist, improve your work . I loved being on his show. His show, his entire sort of organization pushed you to give the fuller context. I think one of the things thats tough about reporting at fox is there are a lot of anchors who wanted to stay in a narrow lane and answer questions and look at a story from a very specific point of view. Shepherd always made sure you brought in the full context of a story. And so the key details didnt get lost in your reporting. Thats something that shepherd specifically did that a lot of other hosts didnt do, at least for myself and in terms of reporting overseas. He wanted a fuller context, even on the days where shep wasnt there because he was maybe off on a friday during the summer, his producers and team there always pushed you to give the full context. Again, thats something that i think will be lost long term with his leaving fox is im not sure there are that many reporters who are willing to give the fuller context unless theyre pushed by an anchor to do so. Its easy to get time on fox if you kow the conservative line tow the conservative line in terms of reporting. A cultural moment. Youre describing why this is significant. Thank you so much for being here. New to come, whats next fshep. And on deck, a look at how much trouble President Trump is in. Douglas brinkley, Sam Donaldson standing by. Well be right back. I was on the fence about changing from a manual to an electric toothbrush. 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They say, yes, we Fact Check Trump sometimes. As one staffer said to me, almost none of us have the power that shep had. So as for shep, he had a noncompete clause which means he cannot join another network right away. His spokesman says, devoquote, s not retiring. Joining me, writers, politics writer for salon. And david zerwick standing by. Amanda, whats your reaction to the news about shep . Theres a paradox involved here. Fox viewers didnt like shep. He had the lowest rated show on the daytime lineup. Yeah. I think that shows that one of the biggest problems facing fox news News Division and any effort to get news out to rightwing america for lack of a better term, is that they dont want to hear it. I think that were facing audiences that are rejecting the truth for ideological reasons. They prefer donald trump and his lies, they prefer donald trump and his, you know, lying twitter feed, and they like fox news best when it is echoing donald trump and his dishonesty. And viewers are going to say youre just being a smug liberal saying that. Whats your proof . Like you said, sheps show was the lowest rated show on fox news. Meanwhile, Tucker Carlsons is pulling millions of viewers a night. And you know, tucker plays fast and loose with the facts. I think its a fair thing to see. You know i was watching one of trumps rallies live on fox. It was striking to look at trumps storytelling skills. I understand that most of the story hes telling is nonsense, to put it one way. But hes selling a really appealing story about fighting the deep state, about fighting the democrats. And i wonder if political pundits sometimes underestimate the storytelling power that both trump and fox have. Yeah. I mean, i think that its hard for a lot of people that are not in that rightwing bubble to understand trumps power over people because his story doesnt make sense to us. But i think what youre seeing is a lot of White Conservative people who used to be the masters of the universe in this country, who used to control this country legally, politically, businesswise, culturally, and now are starting to see that hedge money talented. And Donald Trump Tells them a story about how theyre under assault by a bunch of villainous elites instead of the truth which is that their power is waning in the face of growing diversity. Yeah. Lets bring in david zerwick in washington. Hes been talking about the shep news and how it relates to President Trump, as well. President trump criticized shep. He would tweet against shep. The president seems always to promote the opinion shows on fox and attack the News Division. For example, he attacked that fox poll this week that showed impeachment getting a majority support among americans. David, your reaction . Well, one of the things is, you know, with trump doing that, it really can wear you down. I mean, some of your reporting, you talked about him, about shep just wanting to move on. Maybe being tired of this. You know, i heard some of that from megyn kelly when trump went after her on social media. She was a star at fox at that time, and then of course left. It creates it takes any sense of joy out of the business. When you have that its not just the president. The president is driving many in the fox base to be after you constantly on social media. Yes, yes. Thats psychologically a problem. And you know i dont blame shep one bit for walking away from this if he can, you know, and obviously he can afford to do it with the contracts hes had the last few years 15 million. Yeah. Yeah. Really thats one of the ways fox management getting into bed with trump hurts the network long term. This is a severe blow to its credibility when you lose shep. Ill tell you something else, we havent that hasnt been much discussed is it was fox likes to say, oh, during the day its all news, at night its opinion, blah, blah, blah. It isnt all news during the day. A lot of those shows, those news shows, look like news shows, but theyre stacked with people who replicate the talking points of the white house or rightwing point of view. He didnt do that. Maybe it was because he was a managing editor, but his show didnt have rightwing ringers on it giving talking points. And if they did, he went after them. Thats another huge loss i think to fox on this. We need more of that on the air, not less. All right. Amanda, thank you. David, please stick around. Quick break as we pivot to the impeachment probe thats going on. I want to ask what the press needs to learn from history. Douglas brinkley and Sam Donaldson are next. Orlando isnt just the theme park capital of the world, it also has the highest growth in manufacturing jobs in the us. 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