New York magazine hints around at Shepherd Smith's gayness as best it can in a Q&A today with the Fox anchor. What's hanging above his couch? "Nothing, nobody," Smith answers. And the last Broadway show he saw? The magazine's 2005 profile of CNN anchor Anderson Cooper carried some heavy subtext as well. "Cooper couldn't have looked more put-together in his impeccably modern black suit, crisp pink shirt, and perfectly knotted purple-and-blue tie," it read. A pink shirt! And crisp, no less! Whatever could they be implying? Enough, we say, it's 2008 for God's sakes, a news anchor can be whoever he wants to be. Test your gaydar against ours after the jump as we rate five top news hosts' homosexuality using five video clips and a terribly loose interpretation of the Kinsey Scale.

Ask the press to call a gay news host like they see one, and all of a sudden demureness is a virtue. For every stab taken at outing a closeted news man, a contradictory report pops up. ABC's Sam Champion made out with a chick! Bill Hemmer was seen loving a lady on the Empire State building! But let's be careful not to point out why both those things are newsworthy enough to be mentioned.

Gay? Not so much? Maybe? You tell us. Our bastardization of the Kinsey scale below uses a scale of 0-6. The higher the score, the gayer the news gay.



Hemmer's star rose at CNN, where his boyish looks endeared him to legions of grandmothers and gays. We hear the lady he showed off yesterday has been his girlfriend for several years. Whatever, we giggle when he says "lover" in this video.

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We and everyone we know have seen Anderson Cooper out and about at gay bars for years, so the charade seems a little beyond the point.

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ABC weatherman Sam Champion was spotted the other day sucking face with a woman, which might unnerve his ex-boyfriend Jose or his current flame Sean, if you believe our commenters.

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Fox News anchorman Shepherd Smith has lovely locks, a Southern twang and piles of rampant homosexuality rumors. Of course, he doesn't help matters much by saying "blowjob" by accident during his live newscast, like he does here. A Washington Blade columnist basically outed Smith two years ago when he wrote about running into the anchor at a New York piano bar. He declined Smith's invitation to go back to his place.

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Fox shoutman Sean Hannity's college radio show was canceled when the station accused him of discriminating against gays. Besides his pundit duties, Hannity puts his name behind a match-making feature on his website called, we kid you not, Hannidate, which is the creepiest thing ever. The site's options allow same sex couple searches. "Hannidate is open to everyone," he told a newspaper in 2006, including, the site says, those looking for life partners.

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