Shep Smith says some of his Fox News colleagues 'don't really have rules'

Unflappable Fox News anchor Shep Smith is an anomaly at a network dominated by opinionated hosts like Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, and he's not going anywhere anytime soon.

On Thursday, Fox News announced that Smith just signed a multiyear contract renewal. In an interview with Time, Smith, who got his start working in local news in Florida before landing at Fox News in 1996, said he understands that some viewers are looking for their "worldview to be confirmed," and they don't always get that from him. For example, Smith has debunked the Hannity-approved Uranium One conspiracy, and he's fine with being at odds with his conservative Fox News colleagues.  

"We serve different masters," he said of the opinion-based hosts. "We work for different reporting chains, we have different rules. They don't really have rules on the opinion side. They can say whatever they want. If it's their opinion. I don't really watch a lot of opinion programming. I'm busy." Smith said when he was growing up, people didn't talk about money, politics, or sex, and "right now, everyone wants to talk about those things, and I'm not one of them. Not going to do it." That's why he would never work alongside Carlson and Hannity. "I don't want to sit around and yell at each other and talk about your philosophy and my philosophy," Smith said. "That sounds horrible to me." Read more about Smith's view of the news and the Fox News climate at Time. Catherine Garcia

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.