WaPo profiles Brit Hume

Today's Washington Post presents a fair-and-balanced profile (some might call it a hagiography) of Fox "News" host Brit Hume, penned by Howard Kurtz. Kurtz felt, for some reason, that America needed to know how and why Hume went from being an idealistic, hard-working newspaper reporter in 1965 to an ideological conservative mouthpiece in 2006. The sub-title of the story is, "Brit Hume's Path Took Him From Liberal Outsider to The Low-Key Voice of Conservatism on Fox News." Curiously, Kurtz gives no examples of Hume ever having been a liberal. The anecdotes from his days at ABC News involve his challenging the management on their liberal biases toward news coverage.

When he was assigned to cover Walter Mondale's campaign to unseat Reagan in 1984, Hume says that "personally, I didn't want Mondale to win the election. But I admired him and liked him and felt it was my job to give him a fair shake." Hume was "a real favorite of Mondale's," says Joe Lockhart, who worked on that campaign. In 1988, however, Michael Dukakis's campaign complained to ABC that Hume's coverage of Vice President Bush was much softer than the network's reporting on the Democratic nominee.

After moving up to the White House beat in 1989, Hume occasionally got into arguments with anchor Peter Jennings over how stories should be handled.

"He and Peter had some clashes over coverage of the White House," says Charlie Gibson, who worked closely with Hume before becoming a co-host of "Good Morning America." "I saw Brit make arguments to Peter when he felt Peter was taking a position that was left of center, or wrong."

Hume says he came to feel "out of step with ABC News's natural tendencies." He recalls challenging an assignment about how the first President Bush "isn't doing anything" by saying: "Has it ever occurred to you that this guy's a Republican and Republicans don't believe that government is the solution to all the country's problems?"

Liberal? Excuse me?

Also, as with much of the content on Hume's own Fox "News," there is plenty in the story that bears questionable resemblance to reality. Just one example:

Despite an aura of self-confidence bordering on cockiness, Hume shies away from self-promotion. The day that he scooped the world with Cheney's first account of his accidental shooting of a hunting companion, the former ABC newsman declined an invitation from "Good Morning America," saying he had time only to appear on Fox's morning show.

"Scooped?" Hume's interview with Cheney was a scoop?

No, Howie. The Cheney interview on Fox "News" was part of a White House media strategy to extinguish the flames of a story that had become a legitimate scandal due entirely to the behavior of the Vice-President.

The piece goes on to explain that Hume thought the press acted like "jackals" in covering the Cheney shooting story. It ignores completely the elements of the story that caused the press frenzy in the first place:

• The fact that Vice-President Cheney shot a man in the face, neck and chest


• The fact that Vice-President Cheney refused for several hours to speak with the police about having shot a man in the face, neck and chest


• Conflicting reports as to whether Vice-President Cheney had consumed alcohol prior to shooting a man in the face, neck and chest


• The strong implication that information was withheld from President Bush in the aftermath of Vice-President Cheney having shot a man in the face, neck and chest

Hume's assertion of inappropriately pack-like behavior on the part of the press goes completely unchallenged, and Kurtz leaves completely unexamined the administration's tendency to use shamelessly partisan outlets like Fox "News" and Rush Limbaugh to deliver unfiltered spin when news coverage is not to their liking. This, from Post media analyst Kurtz. Heckuva job, Howie.

The rest of the piece strikes the same tone. But, don't take my word for it. I just report. You decide.