At Fox News, he's the man in the middle

New York — IT was the day after Bill Clinton lost his temper on "Fox News Sunday," and the video of the red-faced former president wagging his finger at Chris Wallace, accusing him of a "conservative hit job," was running on an almost constant loop on the top-rated cable news network.

One anchor, however, made no mention of the episode.

"I just wanted to stay away from it," said Shepard Smith, the 42-year-old Mississippi native who hosts two daily programs on Fox News Channel. "It's great TV; I'm sure it spiked ratings for a lot of people. But we have hours and hours of political debate going on. I'd rather just deal with the facts."

Partisan quarrels and punditry get little play from Smith, the anchor of "Fox Report w/ Shepard Smith," the kinetic, slickly produced program that serves as the cable channel's evening newscast on the East Coast. (It airs at 4 p.m. in the West.) With an average of 1.3 million viewers, it's one of the top-ranked cable news shows and has beaten the competition for 68 straight months -- longer than any other Fox News program. It's also substantially different from the rest of the channel's lineup.

"Anybody who wants to complain that Fox is just a spin machine and Fox is just a bunch of talking heads -- well, not our hour," Smith said between shows on a recent afternoon, leaning his long frame back in a chair in the network's crowded basement newsroom. "We just try to give you the news: give it to you straight, give it to you quickly."

Smith's philosophy may come as a surprise to those who associate outspoken commentators such as Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity with the Fox News brand.

But as the cable channel seeks to burnish its news credentials, Smith -- with his jocular asides and rapid-fire delivery -- is increasingly being spotlighted as the face of the network.

After a year in which he ducked missile fire in Israel and drew plaudits for his reports on the slow rescue efforts after Hurricane Katrina, Smith is being promoted in a new marketing campaign that touts the "Fox Report" as "The Best Evening Newscast in America."

Roger Ailes, Fox News' chairman and chief executive, said: "I'm working on preparing the network for the next 10 years, and he's a mainstay. His future is really unlimited."

It wasn't a future that David Shepard Smith envisioned growing up in Holly Springs, Miss., a "sort-of-stuck-in-time place" southeast of Memphis, Tenn., with 7,000 people, only three television channels and no movie theaters.