An Open Letter to Shepard Smith

October 12, 2019

Dear Shepard -

I truly appreciated your coverage of the news and I am sorry to see you go.

I know lots of Fox News viewers aren’t, but I suppose it was inevitable. Their ride through the Fox tunnel has been long and steady, picking up steam over years as the network slow dripped and then hammered a world view that spoke to them.

A lot of people see that through a strictly partisan lens. I don’t. I believe it’s more about a mindset and a way of approaching life. The powers-that-be at Fox News didn’t just see a conservative void in the media landscape; what they saw was growing unrest and a chance to feed those who see situations through the lens of who is trying to get something over on them.

In their parlance, President Obama is sowing racial discord when he speaks up about some rogue police officers who target people of color. Their focus is almost always on the people cheating a system rather than the many for whom that system is working. Their default response in so many situations is to blame and generalize. We all know the type. They read a story about a robbery at a convenience store and launch into how you can’t trust anyone these days and, oh, by the way, what color was the offender?