Fox News' Shep Smith Dismantles Trump's CNN Snub: Those Who 'Attack the Messenger' Want to Stop You From Knowing the Truth
Fox News' Shep Smith took a step beyond his network's professed solidarity with fellow media outlets on Thursday and offered a full-throated defense of a CNN reporter who had been punished the previous day for simply asking questions of President Donald Trump.
CNN's Kaitlan Collins had been barred from a White House press event on Wednesday after she had called out questions to Trump in the Oval Office. Collins, a member of the core team of reporters covering the president that day, was told her questions were "inappropriate," even though other reporters said she was behaving in accord with the usual norms.
Smith used a segment of his show Thursday to denounce not only that retaliation against Collins but the broader assault from the White House against a critical press.
"For those of you at home, if I may, journalists are not the enemies of the people," Smith said. "It's quite the opposite. Our profession is enshrined in the Constitution and the fourth estate holds the essential job of being your eyes and often ears and, when appropriate, your voice. It's a cornerstone of our republic."
He continued: "Over 22 years at this network, it's been my experience that the journalists of Fox News and Fox Business and those of our colleagues and competitors at CNN and MSNBC, NBC, ABC and CBS, Bloomberg and PBS, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, the Washington Post, all of them, operate in the public interests. We work to discern what is truth. Then to present it to you in context and with perspective."
He even noted that the president's efforts to discredit the press call for a more critical response.
"As an aside, when the president attacks journalists, we question his motivation and try to discover the underlying reason. For historically, those who regularly and as a matter of pattern attack the messenger, that degrade and belittle the purveyors of truth, and work to diminish the free press, often find the facts displeasing and endeavor to keep you from knowing the," he said. "We are on guard, and we hope — politics aside — for the greater good, that you are, too."
Watch the clip below:
