Fox News anchor Shepard Smith, who perhaps covers live breaking news better than anyone, was reminded of his own experience growing up in the South as he watched a group of peaceful marchers in Baltimore Monday night.
Taking a moment to let the live pictures simply play–without, as most cable newsers would, feeling compelled to maintain constant narration–viewers got a rare sense of perspective. They could see–and by simply hearing the sound of feet and the song of the marchers–that not all of Baltimore was lost.
For a full minute and a half, Smith said nothing, letting the marchers peacefully walk under a dark sky, singing the gospel song “I Will Trust in the Lord,” which features the refrain “I’m gonna treat everybody right…until I die.” In letting this moment happen without any TV news over-the-toppery, Smith revealed a far different picture of Baltimore than the constant loop of burning vehicles and police batons on other networks.
Smith later told viewers the song was “like something you might have heard in an AME church back in Holly Springs when I was a kid. When racial tensions were at a high that we had never seen. When blacks and whites couldn’t live well together and they rioted on the streets of those towns.”
Smith said what he was seeing in Baltimore was “much like it was in 1968 when the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated and these same streets, in this same historic community erupted and burned. And neighbors turned on neighbors and a community was lost. And tonight these people come back to reclaim this territory.”
Smith will again be front and center in Fox News’ coverage of Baltimore, reporting from the “Fox News Deck” for a live hour at 11 p.m. ET.