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Brit Hume Exits Fox News

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By WALT BELCHER

wbelcher@tampatrib.com

Published: November 2, 2008

TAMPA - While Brit Hume finds the 2008 presidential race "a great story to cover filled with interesting characters and many twists and turns," he concedes that he's weary of the bipartisan rancor.

"Enthusiasm is the magic ingredient in this job, and over the past few years, I've lost mine," says the man who helped build Fox News Channel. "It's more exhausting than exciting for me."

After a more than 40-year career covering politics, including nine presidential races, Hume has been turned off by the cutthroat nature on both sides of the aisle in Washington.

So it will be a relief for him when he steps back from his role as the senior journalist on Fox News Channel after Tuesday's election.

His departure leaves a void at Fox News. In coming over from ABC, Hume brought credibility. He is an old-school journalist, part of the generation of TV news anchors who came from newspaper backgrounds.

Fox hasn't named a replacement, but Hume has endorsed Fox News Washington correspondent Bret Baier.

"I won't be totally gone because I will be back for special reports and commentary from time to time," Hume says. "I might work 100 days a year. But I'm 65; I'm still in good health; and I didn't want to keep working until I was so old that I couldn't do anything."

In a recent telephone interview, Hume, the managing editor of Fox News' Washington bureau and host of "Special Report," said that at this stage in his life, there are things more important than chasing the daily headlines.

He wants to spend more time with his wife, Kim, who retired two years ago as Fox's Washington Bureau chief. "And she's never been happier," he notes.

He also has two granddaughters, and there's a country home in rural Hume, Va., named for some Scottish relatives who settled there in 1721.

"I want to explore my faith more vigorously," he says, noting that when his son, Sandy Hume, died 10 years ago, he was devastated.

Hume's son, also a television journalist, committed suicide at age 28 following an arrest on a charge of driving under the influence.

"If anyone had asked me if I was a Christian then, I would have said, 'yes,' but it was not something that was in the forefront of my life," he says. "I found strength in my faith, and I decided that I did not want to be a part-time Christian."

He says more Bible study is in his future.

Hume doesn't plan on writing his memoirs or any kind of book. It's too daunting a task, he says. He's also not going to miss the daily "report card" that comes in the form of ratings.

His legacy at Fox may be the "fair and balanced" mantra that he brought to the network. He joined Fox News in October 1996; just two months after Rupert Murdoch launched the network. He left behind a 23-year career at ABC.

At ABC he served as chief White House correspondent from 1989 through 1996, contributing to "World News Tonight With Peter Jennings," "Nightline" and "This Week" as well as various specials for the news division.

He began his career as a newspaper reporter with The Hartford (Conn.) Times and The Baltimore Evening Sun, and then worked for United Press International. He also worked with the legendary muckraking journalist Jack Anderson from whom he says he "developed an antenna for what is really worth covering."

He says he knew from the get-go that Fox was going to be different, and that was the appeal. The network's critics say that it has a conservative bias. But Hume says "there are many ways to look at stories, and Fox shared my perspective."

He says many of the people working in the media share an almost institutional liberal view of the world that affects how they approach stories.

"It's not that it's a conscious effort to promote a liberal agenda; it's that there's a shared set of values that influence how things are covered," he says.

"When I was at ABC, I would butt heads because I would look at a story and see another way to approach it," Hume says. "But I was a reporter before I became a conservative, and I believe that I am still a reporter first and all else is second," he says.

However, some media critics including the liberal watchdog group Media Matters accuse Hume and Fox News of a conservative slant that sometime distorts the truth. The group has contended that Hume and Fox tread softly with conservatives and hit hard on liberals.

Also, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has said repeatedly that Fox News has been out to get him 24/7.

Hume says the network is covering stories that the other networks have ignored or downplayed. He recently devoted one of his "Special Report" programs to what he says is an overwhelming media bias for Obama.

He says that judging from his e-mail, he has rankled as many conservatives as liberals. The increasingly bitter and angry tone of the e-mails has been another turnoff for him. "I finally shut my e-mail down," he says. "I just couldn't take it anymore.

"I think the success of Fox News speaks to the need for this news organization," he says. "A lot of people think our news product is more balanced than the other news networks."

Reporter Walt Belcher can be reached at (813) 259-7654.

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