Fox News Hosts - Who is the worst?

I first saw Shep Smith during Katrina and he was fantastic.

Shep was apparently a reporter here in the Orlando area a while before I lived here, but people have told me he was exactly the same back then as he is right now. I've gotta give that dude love for keeping at it for all these years.

that's a good story, tom junod is a good dude

really good article. i somewhat remember seeing him & geraldo on the air during katrina, i def watched a ton of cable news then but was not paying attention to who the anchors were on fox. there's a clip of this on youtube in which he's trying to tell sean hannity straight up that there is no explanation as to why the people on the bridge in nola weren't getting food and water. hannity is all about helping bush cover his ass, of course, keeps trying to pull this "let's get some perspective" bs & shep is having none of it. along with this are some clips of geraldo freaking the f out.

i do appreciate that shep's team thinks a lot about what's valuable to the audience when putting those shows together - they try to always start by hitting all the basic points of complicated issues & though there's silly stuff in there (friday had like.. a parrot on a skateboard that went missing XD) IMHO it actually gets less airtime than it would on major network. also both of the shows shep does (also baier) are very watchable b/c they're not obsessed with proving how everyone in politics (or everyone in general) is a hypocrite and acting in bad faith, or that politicians being political is shocking and wrong. (shows fixated on assuming/proving hypocrisy all the time & that get v tedious: campbell brown, 1600 penn ave, dobbs, blitzer has cafferty on to grumble about how everyone in public life is worthless).

shep and 538.com were my go to guys during the election.

nate silver was on point with his predictions, that's for sure. def helped him that he's a baseball stats nerd and stuck to the data. i admit that i avoided his site though, because he was so negative when it came to HRC during the primaries (under his former alias @ the daily kos, which is where he got started.. total bunch of haters over there in general, the atmosphere is completely poisoned).

let it go daria

Even after all this time on Fox, Shep is still Jenny on the blowjob for me.

not letting it go! it's a free country, somewhere. but dkos is poisoned regardless of the subject at hand, was my point.

so i watched studio b today -> serious news report concludes with shep & jonathan hunt (britishes correspondent for his show) riffing on how funny it is that north korea has missiles called nodong and taepodong

ended with a segment about a dude arrested for drunk driving who was on.. a vehicle he had built which is a barstool attached to a lawnmower

hoping one/both of these show up on the youtubes, as he called it XD

u guyz I think shep is an alright guy and all, but I do not get this sanctification. fox news is still fox news. this guy is a big part of that institution. he gives a tiny bit of legitimacy to something that really doesn't deserve any.

he gives a tiny bit of legitimacy to something that really doesn't deserve any.

This is true. OTOH, Shep Smith is funnier goofing on other FOX hosts than Joe Scarborough is goofing on Glenn Beck. Sort of an "inside-the-belly-of-the-beast" POV, plus a wry wit.

That other guy on MSNBC who put together the video clip of Beck crying, the guy who was sitting alongside Scarborough on Morning Joe, now that guy was funny.

his presence casts everyone else on the network in the proper light and he almost acts as an on-air ombudsman, therefore the dude rules

I think we all can agree that DailyKos should be ignored as much as possible.

his presence casts everyone else on the network in the proper light and he almost acts as an on-air ombudsman, therefore the dude rules

I am pretty sure Hannity and Beck would seem equally crazy with or without this light that Shep apparently casts on them.

When you have a reasonable and relatable person like Shep arguing that Fox News really is fair and balanced and all about the news...well it's almost even believable when he says it. But c'mon, he's either stupid or lying.

oh he's a company man, to be sure. it's just kind of cool when he goes off script (& tbh I don't have cable so my shep experiences are confined to youtube clips, which are obviously going to be the most o_O moments).

idk maybe i'm putting too much faith in his appeal. but but when you think of all the mouthbreathers in this country who get 100% of their news from Fox, I think it's invaluable to have someone with a shred of sanity inside the Hannity-O'Reilly-Beck idiot echo chamber.

shepard smith makes everyone else around him look even more histrionic, moreso because he clowns on them mercilessly and is a fellow fox news anchor. i dunno about the fair and balanced thing, he might see it that way which would make him neither stupid nor a liar, he might just actually believe it to be true.

that would be option 'stupid'

I don't think he does or is, fwiw

that wouldn't be stupidity, that would be a different perspective, sort of a "forest for the trees" kind of thing

you clearly do not watch the program! I watch! :)

the younger guy on scarbs' show is willie geist, the bald guy is mike barnicle.

far as clowning on the other anchors.. i started to notice (i'm fascinated by this) that there is an understanding going on between many of them, as well as with their audience, as far as what's to be taken serious and what's a joke - and if you don't follow them too much, it looks weirder than it is. for instance apparently a big part of beck's persona is to make fun of himself all the time for being.. dopey, silly, crazy, etc. his own people do this on his own programs.

however, given that making fun of beck somewhat was fair game, shep took it waaaaaaaaaaaay further than it was supposed to go. i don't have a real good perspective on how o'reilly/hannity's real audiences take them, but it's not necessarily true that fans of these guys believe everything they say. limbaugh is damned entertaining and very good at radio & some ppl listen for entertainment alone. of course he's also a shameless liar who poisons the national discourse. i should hate these guys but usually it's just.. SMH.

starting to wonder (krauthammer is on bret baier's show right now being a Very Serious Pundit and i don't believe a damned word he says) if one big problem on fox is with the people who book the shows. on panels, they're going to have a right winger, a conservative, and a centrist, most of the time. i dunno. it's on, it's well produced, people watch it - might be better if the left tried hard to get more people on & talk to that audience b/c so many fewer people watch msnbc.

haha wait, MIKE BARNICLE

no wonder I haven't heard that name in years

right, it's clearly the left that's purposely choosing not to be represented on fox news.

willfully misinterpreting what i wrote, replying with sarcasm <- get one (1) new style of argument, this one is already taken by approx 1 billion people on the internet

oh okay, I will look for a new one

it's just aggravating, i don't know why do that.

I'm just O_o over fox news apologism. an edgy position to take I guess?

but...it's still fox news. it is the conservative news channel run by rupert murdoch and roger ailes.

basically i work for a liberal nonprofit so this is why i know so much about fox pushing conservative talking points. i am just fascinated by it from a theoretical standpoint, also it's hard to maintain anger, it's easier to develop a healthy sense of the absurd.

this is why i heart shep, he gets it. also do not have the impression he hangs out with a bunch of other journalists who often seem to regurgitate the exact same ideas at any given moment..

i can't help it, i kind of love fox. it's soooo over the top. o'reilly is absurd. karl rove is going to be on hannity tonight, i'm sure that will be.. informative. i think i prefer to listen to people when you know where their biases are, and you have to actively think about what's wrong with what they're saying. i know lots of people who like olbermann/maddow but personally find it gets dull to be told stories from their POV.

ok cnn international AFAIK is pretty good, i would watch that if we got it.

the problem is that 75% of fn viewers are not watching it ironically, hoping that this is gonna be one of the days that their inside man winks at them.

and I mean, does shep 'really get it'? if we really believe omar's 'forest for the tree's thing, maybe he doesn't?

Who cares if he gets it? Watching anything "ironically" is so tiresome. Shep Smith is just funny sometimes; he's the only one who doesn't take newscasting seriously, and, on that network, it's a huge plus.

"Shep Smith is funny sometimes" is something I can agree with - I just don't see how that translates into this crazy lovefest.

We all want him to officially come out.

he's the only one who doesn't take newscasting seriously

Deep down, I think he does. He wishes all his peers did too, and that he could go back in time and be a 60s/70s journalist. But given the current state of things, he plays the rational objector.

....with lavender lipstick.

they way i look at it, shep has been w/ fox since its inception, before it was the station of o reilly and hannity and the reputation that it has now, but i think when shep says it's fair & balanced it's him being party company man & part referring to his programs and those non-punditry ones that have a bit of a bent but who doesn't? the duo who are on in the afternoon (forget their names always! one has a really matronly name the other is a bumbling dude but i forget) aren't any better/worse than norah o donnell for instance and i think that's where shep is coming from. it's obvious who he has a distaste for in the network.

this feels like excuse-making to me. fox news inception = top republican media consultant gets put in charge of a news channel. shep (and colmes, who says the exact same things in public) probably thinks "they never asked me about my politics, never tell me what to say..." but like...does he not read the marquee text under his face on the screen? does he just forget who karl rove is when he walks by him on the way to the bathroom? is he really just missing the bigger picture...again and again...every day of his life for the last decade?

"Working for the Man seemed really good to me"

like, why not just skip ahead and appreciate the dude

sounds like a springsteen line

One day all of them decided they wanted to put on make-up and hair pieces and read crap out loud in a phony voice in front of a camera.

I think it was important for folks who get all their news from Fox to see that the fed gov's response to Katrina was woefully inadequate and disgraceful. It was important that Joe the Fucking Plumber get taken to task for his completely uninformed & paranoid opinions, and for someone (outside the librul media) to reiterate that a vote for Obama DOESN'T = the "death of Israel." And even though it was done under the guise of good-natured ribbing, Sheppard's clowning surely did more to undermine Beck's lunatic ravings (among those most susceptible to them) than anyone else could.

I'm certainly not suggesting he's deserving of a Peabody award or anything, but a healthy dose of OMG WTF from inside the Fox News family and (hopefully) diffused among the loyal viewership ain't a bad thing at all.

'course the O'Reilly & Hannity fanatics prob think he's a big pussy so eh...

Yeah, Shep is NOT loved by most of those who watch Fox's primetime programming.

iatee, how many people do you know who are going to throw their careers down the toilet because they're unhappy with what happened the last decade (esp when it wouldn't accomplish anything)? i mean one could look at it as, being a journalist who is objective is valuable to the public, perhaps moreso than yet another.. partisan on the air. should new york times reporters quit or stop being objective because their paper ran judith miller's articles re: iraq, and still runs horrible opinion pieces from dowd/rich who trash dems all the time?

re: colmes, that guy - smart of hannity to have a 'liberal' on his show who ended up taking watered-down stands on most issues and losing arguments most of the time. imho hannity is a little sad without him. dunno if his ratings have changed any. there was a lady at my prev job who was a big hannity fan (also used to work for lieberman.. heh) and she was super duper nice to me & all the ppl in the department who'd argue with her about politics. it was so funny, like <whine> 'i like you, but you haaate america! you just dooooo!' </whine>

great user name, daria

is he really just missing the bigger picture...again and again...every day of his life for the last decade?

It's like a Greek tragedy, titled "Colmes." Better yet, a myth, interpreted by Camus. He alwyas hopes that the next time he passes Rove on the way to the men's room, he will acknowledge him. Hope is all he has.

iatee, I take your points, I do. But when I think of TV journalists to hold Shep up for a blistering comparison to, my mind goes a bit blank. Steven Colbert can't really count, can he?

this feels like excuse-making to me. fox news inception = top republican media consultant gets put in charge of a news channel.

Again, I do get your point, but I don't think you're fully taking into account what a frighteningly debased institution our fourth estate is right now.

This clip isn't just about a bunch of idiots sitting around saying idiotic things, although it certainly is that; it's about them saying baseless, probably libelous things about someone who (gasp) was once a JOURNALIST for CNN.

(Ok, slanderous. Not libelous. Put that correction on the record.)