Speaking broadly, Mr. Smith called for unity in the news business to ward off government encroachment on free expression.
“We know that journalists are sometimes wary of being perceived as activists for some cause,” he said. “But press freedom is not the preserve of one political group or one political party. It’s a value embedded in our very foundational documents. Journalists need to join hands to defend it.”
At Fox News, Mr. Smith’s criticism of Mr. Trump stood out, and he was even mocked on-air by a colleague, the commentator Tucker Carlson. Mr. Smith, 55, had joined Fox News as part of its founding staff in 1996. But he became increasingly disillusioned in recent months about the gap between the network’s prime-time commentary and the reporting produced by its newsroom.
His exit shocked colleagues, with some visibly agape on-air after Mr. Smith informed viewers that Fox News had agreed to let him out of his contract early. The decision most likely cost Mr. Smith millions of dollars in lost salary.
The Committee to Protect Journalists, founded in 1981, works to advance press freedoms, particularly in dictatorial and autocratic countries. In recent years, speakers at its gala have increasingly referred to Mr. Trump’s attacks on the press and the hostile atmosphere faced by American journalists.
On Thursday, the group presented its Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award to Zaffar Abbas, the editor of a daily Pakistani newspaper, Dawn. The other honorees were Patrícia Campos Mello, a journalist at a Brazilian publication, Folha de S. Paulo; Neha Dixit, a freelance investigative journalist in India; two Nicaraguan broadcast journalists, Lucía Pineda Ubau and Miguel Mora, who were imprisoned for 172 days on false charges; and Maxence Melo Mubyazi, a journalist in Tanzania.
The chairs of the dinner were Laurene Powell Jobs, whose Emerson Collective controls the magazine The Atlantic and has made major investments in media companies, and one of her top executives, Peter Lattman, a former journalist at The New York Times.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/21/business/media/shepard-smith-fox-news.html?emc=rss&partner=rss
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