Tag: news anchors

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Shepard Smith Will Host One-Hour News Show On CNBC

Shepard Smith (screen capture)
Openly gay news anchor Shepard Smith, formerly of Fox News, has been announced to host a one-hour news telecast on CNBC at 7 pm ET beginning this fall. After 23 years at Fox News, Smith abruptly announced his departure from the conservative-leaning news outlet last October after being warned of criticizing both Donald Trump and his Fox News ally, Tucker Carlson. From CNBC:

The newscast, which will be called “The News with Shepard Smith,” is set to launch in the fall. Smith’s title will be chief general news anchor and chief breaking general news anchor.

Smith joins CNBC after spending 23 years at Fox News Channel, where he anchored “Shepard Smith Reporting,” “The Fox Report” and “Studio B.” He also served as chief news anchor of the network and managing editor of the breaking news division.

“I am honored to continue to pursue the truth, both for CNBC’s loyal viewers and for those who have been following my reporting for decades in good times and in bad,” Smith said in a press release.

CNBC Chairman Mark Hoffman said Smith has a track record of fact-driven storytelling.

“We aim to deliver a nightly program that, in some small way, looks for the signal in all the noise,” Hoffman said in the press release. “We’re thrilled that Shep, who’s built a career on an honest fight to find and report the facts, will continue his pursuit of the truth at CNBC.”

Dan Colarusso, CNBC’s senior vice president of business news, said Smith’s program aims to go beyond financial markets, “to tell rich, deeply reported stories across the entire landscape of global news.”

Smith casually came out during an interview with HuffPost in October 2016.

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Former PBS NewsHour Anchor Jim Lehrer Dead At 85

Jim Lehrer (image via PBS)

Veteran news anchor Jim Lehrer, who co-founded and helmed the PBS NewsHour for 36 years before retiring in 2011, passed away in his sleep on Thursday at his home in Washington. He was 85.

From the New York Times:

While best known for his anchor work, which he shared for two decades with his colleague Robert MacNeil, Mr. Lehrer moderated a dozen presidential debates and was the author of more than a score of novels, which often drew on his reporting experiences. He also wrote four plays and three memoirs.

A low-key, courtly Texan who worked on Dallas newspapers in the 1960s and began his PBS career in the 1970s, Mr. Lehrer saw himself as “a print/word person at heart” and his program as a kind of newspaper for television, with high regard for balanced and objective reporting.

He was an oasis of civility in a news media that thrived on excited headlines, gotcha questions and noisy confrontations.

In 2001, Lehrer shared with The American Journalism Review he might be viewed as old-fashioned for believing “news is not a commodity.”

“News is information that’s required in a democratic society, and Thomas Jefferson said a democracy is dependent on an informed citizenry. That sounds corny, but I don’t care whether it sounds corny or not. It’s the truth.”

RIP Jim Lehrer.