Shepard Smith left Fox News in October 2019 after 23 years at the network, stepping down from his role as chief news anchor and host of Shepard Smith Reporting.

Quick Scoop: What Happened?

  • Shepard Smith announced on air on October 11, 2019, that he had asked to leave Fox News and that the company had agreed to release him from his contract.
  • Fox’s official line was that he chose to “step down” and that executives had asked him to stay but “graciously obliged” his request to go.
  • Smith later said his position at Fox had become untenable because of “falsehoods” and “lies” being spread on some of the network’s opinion shows, which clashed with his straight‑news approach.

In later interviews, he described staying as “diminishing returns,” saying he had held on “as long as I could” before deciding to walk away.

Why Did He Really Leave?

There was no single public “smoking gun,” but several overlapping factors keep coming up in credible reports and in Smith’s own comments:

  1. Tension with opinion hosts
    • Smith’s daytime newscast focused on straight reporting, while primetime opinion shows pushed more partisan takes, especially during the Trump years.
 * Reports and later commentary described internal friction with figures like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, including very public on‑air feuds and indirect jabs.
  1. Concern about misinformation
    • Smith has said that opinion programming was sometimes pushing claims that the hosts knew were not true, which he felt violated journalistic responsibility.
 * He has framed his departure as a choice to protect his integrity rather than continue in an environment where he believed false narratives were gaining ground.
  1. Long‑building frustration, not a sudden firing
    • Reports at the time said he had brought in a lawyer weeks before his on‑air announcement to negotiate an exit, suggesting this was a planned decision, not a spur‑of‑the‑moment reaction.
 * He has emphasized that he asked to leave and that Fox did not fire him; Fox’s own statement matches that version.

A typical “forum” way people summarize it is something like:

“He was the straight‑news guy in a place that was increasingly opinion‑driven. After years of clashes and watching misinformation spread, he finally decided he’d had enough and walked.”

What Did He Do After Fox?

  • In 2020, Shepard Smith launched The News with Shepard Smith on CNBC, a nightly straight‑news program at 7 p.m. Eastern.
  • The show ran for about two years; CNBC canceled it in 2022 as the network shifted focus back toward core business coverage, and Smith left the channel.
  • More recently, coverage has focused on his ongoing work and projects outside cable primetime, including news and analysis efforts with an emphasis on factual reporting and, in at least one report, personal‑finance‑oriented news content.

How People Talk About It Online

In public forums and discussion threads, you see a few recurring angles:

  • Some praise him as one of the few “just‑the‑facts” voices at Fox who pushed back on misinformation and paid a career price for it.
  • Others argue Fox didn’t fight hard enough to keep him because his style didn’t fit the ratings‑driving, opinion‑heavy primetime model.
  • A smaller group insists it was purely a personal or contract decision and downplays the ideological or internal‑conflict angle, pointing to Fox’s cordial official statement.

In short, what happened to Shepard Smith on Fox News is a mix of an official “voluntary resignation” and a long‑running internal clash between hard‑news journalism and opinion‑driven programming, which he has since described as incompatible with his standards for truth‑based reporting.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.