Does Catherine Herridge Leaving for CBS News Portend a Left Turn for Fox News?
By Peter Barry Chowka
AmericanThinker.com
November 5, 2019
The announcement last Thursday that popular veteran Fox News reporter Catherine Herridge would be leaving the channel the following day – and moving to a new job as Senior Investigative Correspondent at CBS News later this month – took both viewers and media watchers by complete surprise. On the heels of the declaration three weeks earlier by prominent Fox News Channel news host Shepard Smith during his afternoon program that he would be leaving the channel that same day, the news about Herridge occasioned an immediate wealth of wild speculation by pundits weighing in with their opinions about what her departure means for the future of Fox News.
For example, an article at a popular conservative site, Wayne Dupree dot com (currently ranked #1,430 of all U.S. Web sites by Alexa), offered the headline “Need More Proof Fox News is Circling The Drain? Award-Winning Journalist Catherine Herridge is Leaving:”
As Fox News circles the liberal drain, Herridge was one of the reasons to keep watching, because she embodied the “fair and balanced” mantra that Fox abandoned years ago.
This kind of fact-challenged spin typifies a popular online meme about Fox News that has been circulating among conservatives during the past two years – the assertion that the channel is taking a major “turn to the left.” Before revisiting the validity of that claim, it is useful to review some actual facts, and also to consider a modicum of not unreasonable speculation, about Catherine Herridge’s departure from Fox News.
Fifty-five and Counting: Time for a Break?
Catherine Herridge is now 55 years old. She has worked at Fox News as a reporter since the channel launched in October 1996. Previously, she worked at ABC News. Initially at Fox, she was a political reporter known for covering the post-White House political career of Hillary Rodham Clinton and also for reporting a wide variety of breaking news stories. In recent years, Herridge has had the title Chief Intelligence Correspondent and has appeared on both FNC news and conservative prime time opinion programs, reporting on developments in the cases of alleged Russia collusion and, in recent weeks, the efforts to impeach President Donald Trump.
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