Shepard Smith Puts the “News” in “Fox News” (Or So Says Shepard Smith)

Shepard Smith represents the “news” portion of Fox News Channel — and he’s telling the New York Times all about it.

In a lengthy profile today, Smith tells Bill Carter: “There can’t be a Fox News without news.”

But without Shepard Smith, many of the network’s huge base of conservatives would be a bit happier.

Since Smith’s on-air comments in the wake of the Holocaust Museum shooting earlier this month, Rush Limbaugh and others have spoken out against Smith and his “preposterous” declaration about “people way out there on a limb” who were emailing him.

Smith tells the Times he’s received “thousands of them” — and more since he called them out.

“And I know they don’t mean the things they say. I know they don’t hate me and want death on my family,” he said. “What they mostly say, he explained, is: ‘You don’t belong there’…I do belong here.”

His two hours (3pmET and 7pmET) are still #1 on cable by a mile — but will conservative outrage force FNC to temper their “fair and balanced” anchor?

(image by Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times)

—–

• Follow Steve on Twitter

Follow us on Twitter.

Sign up for Mediaite's daily newsletter.