You’re right about Howard K. Smith; but he was the last of a type: educated by what happened when the appeasers controlled Britain in the thirties, he like Murrow opposed totalitarianism. Smith understood that a Republic ALWAYS had to be defended; and he knew America WAS a republic, not a pure democracy.
Today, we have the blow-dried class of ‘reporter’ who only knows that America is mostly evil, and that the collectivists in the old USSR were never given a fair hearing in the US media.
Sad but true.
Honestly, I can’t believe that anyone watches network news anymore, anyway. The person the writer described is Britt Hume.