Shepard Smith, one of the few voices at Fox News who has been willing to be critical of President Donald Trump, is stepping down from the network.

Per Washington Post media reporter Erik Wemple, Smith’s final show was on Friday and his termination is effective immediately.

Smith’s departure comes less than two days after Attorney General Bill Barr held a mysterious meeting with Fox CEO Rupert Murdoch. There is no evidence linking Barr’s Murdoch meeting to Smith’s sudden departure, although critics of the White House have been raising questions about why the attorney general was meeting with a media mogul at a time when Trump has been openly critical of the network.

In a stunning announcement, Shepard Smith announced on his Friday show that after more than two decades at Fox News, he was stepping down as chief news anchor, and leaving the network. "This is my last newscast here," Smith said.

Smith said that he recently asked Fox to allow him to leave to begin a "new chapter." "After requesting that I stay, they graciously obliged," Smith said. Smith signed off his newscast saying, "Even in our current polarized nation, it is my hope that the facts will win the day, that the truth will always matter, that journalism and journalists will thrive."

K9s wrote: Fri Oct 11, 2019 7:36 pm Where does that go on his long list of lies? Does anyone really believe him anymore, I wonder? I won't post a Trump-Pinocchio meme. No need.

K9s wrote:I guess he will do his own radio show and wait out the current Trump Fever?

He would fit in at CNN, though, because he is "Conservative" in a pro-business/anti-worker way, not a fake-Christian fake-Conservative Trumpian way. CNN has become pretty conservative lately (except the night shift/prime time).

wpkato wrote: Fri Oct 11, 2019 11:07 pm I read elsewhere he has a non compete clause so we won't see him on the tube for awhile. Podcast? ..who knows

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I wonder," he told a Time magazine reporter last year, "if I stopped delivering the facts, what would go in its place in this place that is most watched, most listened, most viewed, most trusted? I don't know."

But he had had enough. In September, according to a well-placed source, he went to Fox News management and asked to be let out of his long-term contract. Tensions with the opinion shows were the breaking point. Executives at the network leaned on him to stay, but to no avail. On Friday afternoon he announced his departure on the air, then exited the building immediately, clearly emotional about saying goodbye to his television home of twenty years. For months I have been working on a book about Fox News in the Trump age. Staffers have been confiding in me about the challenges of covering the news inside a network that is increasingly defined by sychophantic pro-Trump personalities like Sean Hannity.
Staffers on the news side unanimously point to Smith as a role model.

But "it was clear he wasn't happy, on air and off air," one of the staffers said after Friday's stunning resignation announcement. Two other staffers also said he'd indicated he "wanted to leave" -- meaning that he was not forced out by management, as some outsiders immediately speculated on social media.
"I think it probably just got to be too much," one of Smith's allies inside Fox News headquarters said.
In my reporting, in the months before Smith's resignation, I have been asking sources about Smith and why he has decided to stay put at Fox while other top journalists have left.

"Some of the top names among the news side at Fox" have been "leaving voluntarily one by one," a former staffer pointed out, as big chunks of the network have basically been co-opted by Trump.
Carl Cameron, who used to be Fox's chief political correspondent, said earlier this year, "Shep and I were among the first hires" at Fox "and I give that man huge credit for continuing to do it. I reached my limit." He left soon after Trump took office. Smith had an incredibly sweet gig, at least on paper. His most recent contract reached $15 million a year, according to a person familiar with the matter, far more than he would make at any other channel. "Years ago, he told me it was all about the money," one of Smith's former colleagues said. But in the Trump age, that former colleague said, it wasn't "about the money anymore. It's about saying he's holding down the mantle of journalism." Another source challenged the suggestion that Smith ever cared primarily about the paycheck: "It's never been about the money for Shep. It's about the truth." Smith's show was the ultimate manifestation of the tensions between news and opinion at Fox.

But Smith seems interested in being back in the public eye at some point.
"The decision to leave was Shep's and his alone -- he will be taking an extended period of time off to be with his family," Chris Giglio, a spokesperson for Smith, said. "Following that -- who knows -- he is not retiring."