While FOX continued to pounce all comers in the ratings, it was MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell who made for the most intriguing storyline: Friday marked his last show at 8 p.m. (he’s being swapped with Ed Schultz and starts broadcasting at 10 p.m. tonight), and he went out with a bang, finishing in second place behind [...]

Thursday night’s ratings would have been excused if they were a little low; there was, after all, a World Series game, and MTV had the Jersey Shore season finale (and reunion!). But that wasn’t the case at all. Maybe it was Gadhafi’s murder, perhaps it was a string of repeats on other channels (Bill O’Reilly, [...]

There’s really nothing funnier than a news anchor clearly not caring about the story he’s being asked to report. Recent examples have starred the likes of Bob Beckel and Don Lemon, and now we can add to that list one Shepard Smith.

Apparently some in the media are trying to turn the re-entry of a dead NASA satellite (the size of a bus) into Skylab 2.0. However, Smith could only get a few sentences into his report on the (infinitesimally small) chances of getting hit by pieces of the falling craft before stopping and declaring the story “the stupidest thing we’ve ever done!

15 years ago Fox News Channel officially joined the cable airwaves, and seeing as they have spent the last decade as the most watched cable news outlet, you would forgive them for taking a victory lap to celebrate. Literally.

As part of a larger campaign to observe 15 years on air, Fox News Channel will be hitting the road, sending many of their top on-air talent to numerous locations around the nation to report live and broadcast their shows. Starting out from Orlando on September 19th, the tour will hit six cities across the country, airings special episodes of key shows from each stop.

A couple of weeks ago, we reported that Fox News’ Shepard Smith was contributing to Fox News’ digital-only eBook, Rise of Freedom: The New World Trade Center, which became available on August 23rd.

In the eBook, Smith looks back on his experience covering the 9/11 terrorist attacks. An experience, he recalls, that moved the veteran reporter to tears.

Hurricane Irene is slowly making its way through the eastern seaboard, and on Fox News today, Shepard Smith, who does not normally anchor on Saturdays, updated viewers on the latest on the scope of the hurricane and how it has impacted the region.

In less than a month, the nation (and, specifically, the media) will commemorate 10 years (ten. years.) since terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. To that end, HarperCollin and Fox News Channel have joined forces to publish a digital-only eBook, Rise of Freedom: The New World Trade Center on August 23rd.

The eBook will detail the planning and construction that has gone on at Ground Zero since the attacks through text, photos, animation and video.

Ah, the campaign trail: that all-American journalistic adventure where, equipped with a camera, a notepad, and dreams, anything can happen. Just take what happened to “Campaign” Carl Cameron in Iowa today– giving an on-location report of a Republican fundraiser, who is to appear but Mitt Romney, munching on a hot dog and “spontaneously” bumping into Cameron to say hello on camera. If Romney doesn’t win the presidency, this appearance at least merited him a good 27 Oscars.

With World Wrestling Entertainment’s SummerSlam this Sunday night on Pay-Per-View, it seemed like an appropriate time to realize that the primetime cable news universe can often resemble the world of professional wrestling. With various hosts often feuding with one another, and frequently giving passionate “promos” regarding why their network or their show is the best, it’s time now to recognize who each host actually is inspired by in the WWE and then to pit the oversized personalities of cable news up against one another in a no-holds barred showdown!

The opinion news media (and, ahem, those who cover it) have experienced something of a love/hate relationship to the debt crisis. On the one hand, it’s nearly impossible to create engaging, insightful commentary on the fact that something is still not happening. But, then again, the opinion news machine is nothing if not creative in what it elects to report on and the narratives spun out of these headlines. So let’s take a moment and analyze those in the media who came out on top in their coverage of the debt discussions, be that coverage straightforward reporting or subjective analysis, and those who dropped the ball somewhere along the way.

On his show earlier today, Shepard Smith wondered why President Obama would accept a temporary deal to raise the debt ceiling when the Republicans will change the terms of their negotiations anyway.

With tonight’s MLB All-Star Game set in Arizona, organizers decided to use the opportunity to honor and showcase one of the state’s most beloved heroes, the young intern that saved Rep. Gabrielle Giffords‘ life during last January’s fatal shooting. Before tossing out the first pitch, Daniel Hernandez sat down for a chat with Shepard Smith on the opportunities before him since the incident, how he and other victims are coping, and moving forward for Arizona.

Florida congressman Bill Hager is pushing for a new law that would make it a felony to not report the disappearance of a child in a timely manner. The so-called “Caylee’s Law,” named for the two-year-old daughter of Casey Anthony, most likely has a little something to do with the anger and frustration many felt after learning that Anthony had spent 31 days partying rather than reporting the “disappearance” of her young child. Of course, we now know that Caylee wasn’t missing at all but, rather, dead and discarded.

Watch Fox News’ segment on the proposed law, where Studio B host Shepard Smith freely admits he “doesn’t understand what the motive is.” Things got a little heated, to say the least.

Who among us hasn’t launched into a possibly airport Chili’s El Niño® Margarita-fueled tirade aboard an airplane, launching into rants about how the [fiddlesticking] [fudge]holes at, say, Continental Airlines are so unbelievably incompetent? Such is the situation TV producer and children’s book author Robert Sayegh found himself in on a recent flight to [fudging] Newark. This afternoon, Fox News’ Shepard Smith sat down with Sayegh to try and figure out just what the [fricassee] happened.

Hey, here we go! It’s the most repugnant thing I’ve seen all week (and, by the way, I was the guy who pixelated this picture)! In Florida, more than a hundred people gathered to get tickets to watch the Casey Anthony murder trial and things got a little out of hand in a clip so unpleasant that Shepard Smith felt the need to publicly shame the entire Sunshine State.

In a discussion of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his suggestions at a NATO meeting in Brussels that America’s European allies should be sharing more of the risks and costs of of conflicts–or the U.S. might one day decide the burden-sharing arrangement was no longer in American interests–Fox News anchor Shepard Smith vented about the extraordinary number of commitments U.S. forces are already engaged in. “We’ve got Afghanistan, which seems to be war without end. We’ve got Iraq, which is clearly war without end. We have our third “not war” now in Libya, and we have our fourth not even yet war in Syria, yet we’re there,” Smith said, asking “isn’t there a time when you say ‘enough already, fight your own fight?’”

Fox News anchor Shepard Smith says it’s insulting for outgoing New York Times executive editor Bill Keller to call Fox’s “Fair and Balanced” slogan “cynical,” as he did back in March. In an interview at the New York Press Club, Smith was asked about those comments. “I don’t enjoy being insulted by people who talk in generalities,” Smith said to journalist Rich Lamb. “My guess is that the people on his opinion page don’t get that kind of broad and sweeping review.”

Fox News anchor Shepard Smith seemed to cut short an interview with a computer security expert Thursday afternoon, after stopping the guest to ask
if he did business with Google, which was the company the expert was discussing–and lavishly praising. In the segment, about a group of hackers who infiltrated hundreds of Gmail accounts, Symantec executive Francis Desouza began by saying “first, I think Google deserves a lot of credit for coming forward and talking about this attack.”

Shep Smith certainly has a gift at cutting to the heart of matters. After stumbling over Rep. Anthony Weiner’s statement to MSNBC’s Luke Russert (he used Thesaurus.com to make sure “certitude” meant what he thought it did), Smith wondered aloud how anyone could be confused about whether a penis belonged to them or not.

When this sketch began, I assumed it would be about the recent Republican presidential debate, but it turns out that was too boring, even for SNL. Instead, we got the “Undeclared Republican Presidential Candidates Debate,” which I should have seen coming because it gave Tina Fey the opportunity to dust off her Sarah Palin impression.

In the days since the announcement of Osama bin Laden’s death, Fox News’ Shepard Smith has been doing a lot of thinking out loud and some very interesting thoughts are coming out. Just earlier this afternoon, he stated that he was skeptical of the government’s account of the capture. Later he wondered aloud whether they’d be able to make a Freedom of Information Act request to acquire the Bin Laden death photo. After mulling it over for a few seconds, he made up his mind and asked the Fox News lawyers to get started on it right there on the air.

Yesterday may have been the wackiest media day of the year, what with the wrath of President Obama’s birth certificate being unleashed on the world. To Jon Stewart, it was a day in which the media got to say “I told you so” over and over, whether they had told you so or not. Cowering at various lectures from all across the political spectrum, Stewart and Senior Black Correspondent Larry Wilmore handily captured the madness of the day.

Shepard Smith weighed in on the latest developments in the ongoing birth certificate saga and demanded to know from Birthers, “are you happy now?” Shep wasn’t proud with the media and especially had a tough, disapproving tone of Donald Trump‘s role in the whole ordeal.

Well there it is. The most respected newscaster at the most watched and dominant cable news network has weighed in on the controversy surrounding Barack Obama‘s citizenship (and legitimacy as president of the United States) and has found for the president. “Fox News can confirm the president of the United States is a citizen of the United States,” said Fox News Shep Smith, adding for dramatic effect, “Period.” Next!

Shepard Smith is sick of the government lying to us. “The list is so long, we don’t have room for it on the screen any more!” he exclaimed today during Studio B. Smith was covering the latest WikiLeaks release in the Washington Post that details the United States’ secret backing of Syrian opposition forces and he made it abundantly clear just who he thought was fighting the good fight. “Man, we’ve learned a lot from the WikiLeaks people, haven’t we?” Smith asked with a smile.