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For the past month, Vice co-founder and CEO Shane Smith has had a remarkable number of questions, which he’s posed in a new interview show titled, appropriately, “Shane Smith Has Questions.”

The show, which airs on YouTube and on Vice’s cable TV channel, is clearly meant to be a return to form for both Smith and the company after its bankruptcy, sale to a hedge fund, the layoff of hundreds of employees, and what Smith has recently described as a regrettable, years-long foray into wokeism.

If Smith has questions, so might viewers, including about his aims and standards of fact-checking.

“Now, more than ever, the truth is unclear,” Smith proclaims in an intro sequence. “What’s real, what’s fake, and who’s manipulating the narratives that have us questioning our facts.” As the podcast’s somewhat garbled YouTube description puts it, the show is “dedicated to getting to the bottom of prominent instances of misinformation and disinformation while revealing the fascinating fundamental truths (if there are any?) of the most interesting and convoluted social and political issues of our time.”

But in the course of supposedly investigating disinformation, Smith has also promoted it, along with conspiracy theories, questionable sources, and right-wing narratives that are depicted as objective fact.

As The Intercept recently noted, the show has advanced several anti-immigration tropes, titling one video “This is how illegals are sneaking into the USA.” (The word “illegals” was later replaced with “people.”) Another recent show discussed how “droves” of Chinese nationals are coming to the US; the sole interviewee was Todd Bensman, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, an anti-immigration think tank.

Then there are the conspiracy theories: in an episode on the July assassination attempt against Donald Trump, Shane promoted the idea there was something suspicious. “Who’s trying to kill Trump and why?” the show’s title pontificated. Although he took no position on such theories, Smith gave generous air time to the notion that the Deep State or a possible second shooter could have been involved. He also speculated that mysterious forces could have played a role in what he termed “a coverup” of the real sequence of events.

“The more these people talk, the more suspicious it seems,” said one Smith guest, retired Canadian military sniper and YouTuber Dallas Alexander. He speculated to Smith that there had been a “second shooter” targeting Trump, an assertion with no evidence but that was presented with equal weight as other claims.

The show also, inevitably, features suspicion-mongering about Covid vaccines. During a conversation with Twitch streamer Destiny, Smith indicated he feels “duped” by mainstream advice on Covid vaccines and now believes them to have undisclosed side effects that were also covered up by the government.

If Smith has questions, so might anyone viewing the show: about what its aims are, its standards for fact-checking, and why it consistently adopts anti-immigration narratives, despite Smith being a Canadian immigrant himself. (A public relations professional who’s recently spoken on Vice’s behalf did not respond to a request for comment, and an email address for the company’s press office no longer works.)

A number of disclosures are necessary here: I was a reporter at Vice News from October 2019 to February 2024, when the majority of staff were laid off. I’m also one of a small group of remote staffers who filed an unsuccessful National Labor Relations Board complaint arguing........

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