Shepard Smith Says Goodbye to Fox News

"Together with my colleagues we've written a first draft of history and endeavored to deliver it to you, while speaking truth to power, without fear or favor with context and perspective," Smith said while speaking directly to viewers.

"This is my last newscast here. Thank you for watching today and over the decades," the 55-year-old anchor continued. "It's been an honor and my pleasure. Even in our currently polarized nation, it's my hope that the facts will win the day, that the truth will always matter, and that journalism and journalists will thrive."

There is a wall of difference between being ideologically and politically partisan on the one hand, and holding racist views and propagating hatred on the other. Fox News Channel is more than being an apostle or a channel of right-wing views. It succeeded in offering a platform for everything that promotes racial animosity as well as a socio-economic divide in America. 

Around the year 2000 during the height of Wall Street Multi-Billion Merger Deals, American Civil Rights Activist, Reverend Jesse Jackson Snr, went on a roadshow to Wall Street, meeting and pleading with Wall Street Business Moguls (Lawyers, Accountants, Bankers, and Financiers) to create rooms or at least, allow people of color to participate in the crumbs that are falling down from their tables. 

A legitimate demand, no doubt. But the now-disgraced Fox New ace anchor, Mr. Bill O'Reilly saw it differently. He invited two of these gentlemen to his studio and told them vehemently and unequivocally not to listen to Reverend Jackson or do what he told them to do. He told them not to succumb or be a victim of Jesse's manipulations. Watching the two gentlemen, you could see easily that they were not on the same page with Mr. O'Reilly.

Not done, Mr. O'Reilly went on to invite the leader of the Black Panthers Movement, who, of course, is not on friendly terms with most African-American political activists. He told the gentleman (a handsome, tall, and tough-talking lawyer by profession) that Reverend Jackson's Wall Street Movement is to benefit himself and his family and not African American professionals. After bouts of spirited bashing of the Reverend by Mr. O'Reilly, his guest came up with a line that devasted Mr. O'Reilly. 

The Black Panthers Chairman took a deep breath, looked at Mr. Oreilly straight in the eye and like a bolt from the blue, declared: "Reverend Jesse Jackson is a Brother, who beat Jackson, beat me." Hearing that line, I jumped up from my sofa, shouting "yes, yes, yes, give it to him, brother, give it to him." That Mr. Bill O'Reilly was devasted by that statement was an understatement. And remained incoherent until the interview came to an end. 

Mr. Bill O'Reilly, by his invitation of the two Wall Street's deal-makers and the leader of the Black Panthers Movement to his studio, was not to promote "small government" or "tax breaks for the rich" - all Republican talking points - but discredit Reverend Jesse Jackson and block the doors that the Reverend was fighting to open for people of color. That was racism unhinged. Thank God, Mr. O'Reilly failed woefully. 

Mr. Glen Beck was another version of Mr. O'Reilly until Fox News Channel canceled his show following the rebellion of advertisers. Mr. Glen Beck orchestrated the firing Mr. Van Jones from the Obama Administration on the allegation that he promoted a communist view as a young man. He did not stop there, together with Mr. Bill O'Reilly and Mr. Rush Limburge, they declared on air that their goals and prayers are for President Barack Obama to fail in office. President Obama did not fail in office. Mr. Glen Beck and Mr. Bill O'Reilly failed in their racist espionage and humiliated out of Fox News Channel. 

Today, American Journalism World is mourning over the unexpected departure of Mr. Shepherd Smith from his job at Fox News Channel and his friends and foes have one thing in common to say about him: he lives in the World of facts and he champions and propagates facts unapologetically. And he will strongly be missed. I wish him the best in his new endeavors and may he find the grace to embrace a new chapter where he will be of immense service to those who are underserved in news gathering and dissemination. Granted he is caucasian; nevertheless, as we often say in Naija parlance, I want to conclude by saying "he is a brother from another mother."  Given the chance, I will do exactly what he did at Fox News Channel. That's what I do here on this Blog. And that is why Mr. Shepherd Smith is a brother.