The clues to Brit Hume’s imminent departure from the anchor’s desk at Fox News are all around on this brilliant autumn morning, if you know where to listen and look.
As he paces his book-filled office in Fox’s Washington bureau, cell phone to his ear, Hume is busy organizing a family lunch. His golf clubs are in the trunk of his car for his regular Sunday afternoon game at the Chevy Chase Club. And on his desk, a well-thumbed Bible lies open to the Book of Peter.
The 65-year-old Hume is eager to pursue those interests more fully at the end of the year, when he steps down as anchor of Fox’s “Special Report with Brit Hume.”
“I’ve always thought about 65 as an endpoint,” says Hume, reclining in his desk chair, thumbs beneath leather suspenders adorned with Fox News logos hand-painted by his staff. “And I’ve had this lifelong yearning for school to be out.”
School won’t be out for Hume completely. The Washington native will continue part-time at Fox, working 100 days next year as a senior analyst and continuing his role as panelist on “Fox News Sunday.”
“Look, so little was expected of me during my school years that any success I’ve had has far exceeded expectations,” he says. “So I don’t feel I have anything left to prove. I don’t have some further ambition. And when you run out of further ambitions, it’s time to quit.”
After honing his investigative reporting skills working for columnist Jack Anderson, he spent almost a quarter-century at ABC, overcoming an early awkwardness in front of the camera to become the network’s senior White House correspondent and winning an Emmy in 1991 for his Gulf War coverage.
“He brings more experience to television news and to Fox than anyone else,” says National Public Radio political correspondent Mara Liasson, a regular panelist on “Fox News Sunday.” “His experience and depth of knowledge, which he earned through years of actual reporting … show every day on Fox.”
When he came to Fox, lured by the promise of helping build Rupert Murdoch’s fledgling network from the ground up, “It was the easiest decision I ever made, really. I didn’t come half-heartedly. I was part of the team, not some guy who was testing the waters.”
Hume believed it would take five years for Fox News “to become a player” in the cable-news business. As it turned out, Fox leapfrogged to the top of the ratings race in that time, winning viewers with its coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal and a catchy slogan — “fair and balanced” — that signaled that the network was not just another liberal-leaning news organization.
“But after you reach first place, there ain’t anything above that. It’s a good place to be, but it’s not as much fun.”
Which may be why Hume frequently turns nostalgic about his early days at the old Hartford Times. He was sent to the paper by an employment agency at a time when he was desperate for work, newly married and with a child on the way.
“That was the greatest blessing I ever had professionally, to walk into this first job when I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I loved it from the minute I set foot in the place.”
Weekly Standard Executive Editor Fred Barnes, who has known Hume since 10th grade and attended college with him at the University of Virginia, chuckles as he remembers a classmate, who — much like himself — “had intellectual interests in college, but they didn’t necessarily coincide with the classes he was taking. Brit came to journalism for lack of anything better to do.”
During his career, Hume has moved from “instinctive liberal” to philosophical conservative. In the early 1980s, when Hume began covering Congress, he was struck by the way the press ridiculed President Reagan for his “trickle-down” economics.
“I did some fairly serious reading about it. So I came to think that what he said should be taken seriously.”
Taking trickle-down economics seriously prompted some liberals in politics and in the media to claim that Hume had lost his objectivity — a charge that Hume vigorously denies.
“I was a reporter before I was a conservative. And I’m still a reporter first.”
Barnes points out that many prominent Democrats, including Walter Mondale and former President Bill Clinton, “think Brit was the fairest of all the reporters who covered them. Those people who criticize Brit are criticizing Fox. It’s pure liberal bias.”
Hume’s journalistic talents are best displayed on Sunday morning. He makes clear, analytical points in a deep voice that seems to become softer as the voices around him grow louder.
Asked last Sunday about media bias in the campaign, Hume attributed it in part to “the normal media tendency to favor Democrats and liberals,” but allowed that reporters also were responding to the historic nature of Obama’s candidacy, something that “kind of gladdens your heart.”
“Gladdens your heart?” shot back Juan Williams of NPR, a regular panelist. “He’s a politician.”
Hume reminded Williams, an African-American, that he had acknowledged the historic nature of the campaign, but unlike most reporters, “You never really drank the Kool-Aid.” Then Hume concluded that while pro-Obama bias was real, it has been “the external events and the conditions in the country, perceived and real, that have decided this campaign.”
Unlike many Washington journalists, Hume does not define himself by his job, and assiduously avoids the Georgetown social scene.
“Brit is a very gregarious person, but he’d rather spend time with friends than make small talk on the party circuit,” says wife Kim Hume, who retired as Fox’s Washington bureau chief two years ago. “I think part of it is that he grew up in Washington. And part of it is, his idea has always been that none of this is about him. That is rare in this world.”
The couple usually spend weekends at their Virginia home, return to Washington in time for the Sunday show, then head to the Chevy Chase Club for lunch with their grandchildren and, when the weather is reasonable, a round of golf.
After abandoning the game as a young man, he took it up again six years ago at Kim’s urging and now plays, avidly and determinedly, to a 12 handicap. On the golf course, the two act as each other’s swing coaches and sports psychologists — “a sure sign of a happy marriage,” says a Washington friend and frequent golfing partner.
“Brit is such a regular guy that you forget he’s a national TV personality,” this friend says. “But then you’ll be in an airport with him, and suddenly he’s swarmed by people who want his autograph or a picture taken with him. He’s wonderfully gracious about it all, always thanking them for watching the show. He has the modesty of someone who came to celebrity relatively late in life.”
The 1998 suicide of his son, Sandy, a promising journalist who had appeared on Fox with his father, has turned Hume’s attentions toward the Christianity that he had only nominally pursued before.
“I’ve watched my wife pursue this very serious Bible study program for the past several years. She has found it enormously interesting and beneficial. Those things are out there. You can do that. I want to do that. And time is the thing I need.”
Hume has been “the most regular attendee” at a weekly Bible study that Barnes has run at his office for the past several years. “These were things that 10 years ago weren’t important to him,” says Barnes. “Now they’re the most important thing in his life.”
Or at least Hume hopes they will be, someday. “I think about God and Christ a lot. But is it first thing in the morning, last thing at night, every day and night?” Hume asks, gesturing to the Bible on his desk.
“Not yet. And I want to get there.”
The Book on Hume
He may be known as a conservative, but Brit Hume owes his authorial career to an ideologically opposite.
Hume’s first book, 1971’s “Death and the Mines,” was an examination of corruption in the West Virginia coalfields. And it was proposed and arranged by a seemingly unlikely source: consumer advocate and future presidential candidate Ralph Nader.
The two men met when Hume received a fellowship to the Washington Journalism Center in 1969. Curious about investigative reporting, he attended a seminar led by Nader, and asked him afterward if he might suggest a topic worth investigating.
“And not only did he suggest a subject, but he said there was a book in it! And not only was there a book in it, but he could arrange the contract!” says Hume, still sounding slightly incredulous. “I was just bowled over by that. I didn’t know if I could write a book or not.”
It turned out that he could. Nader arranged a contract with his own publisher, and Hume vividly recalls “riding the train back to Washington, with a copy of that book, freshly printed, in my briefcase.”
“And I kept taking it out and looking at it. I could scarcely believe I had done it,” he says. “Books have a real half-life. Even if you write a book and it only sells 2,000 copies, those books are going to be around long after you’re gone.”
Hume’s second book was “Inside Story” (1974), a memoir of his days working for columnist Jack Anderson. Although he’s frequently asked if he wants to write a third book, he concedes that at the moment, he hasn’t found a subject that interests him enough to pursue it.
If he does write another volume, however, there will be no ghostwriters: Hume says he’ll do his own research. And he knows, at least, the kind of book he won’t be penning.
“ ‘The World According to Me,’ ” he says disdainfully. “They tell me something like that could sell some books, based on my cachet. Who knows — I might get hard up enough to do that, but no thanks.”
Biography
Born Alexander Britton Hume on June 22, 1943, in Washington, D.C., the son of Virginia Powell and George Hume.
His father, an inventor and businessman, “was probably a natural Republican. But my mother, when my brother was coming along … she was almost radicalized by the Vietnam War. So she was kind of a leftie.”Grew up Episcopalian and attended Washington’s private St. Albans School.
Graduated with a degree in English from the University of Virginia in 1965, where he now recounts with a smile, “I barely got in. Barely got out.”
His first job in journalism was as a reporter for The Hartford Times. He later worked for UPI and the Baltimore Evening Sun.
Wrote his first book, Death and the Mines, in 1971, with the help of Ralph Nader. His second book, 1974’s “Inside Story,” recounted his time spent working for columnist Jack Anderson — where he and other Anderson staffers were briefly under CIA surveillance, thanks to some of Anderson’s columns about Pakistan.
Became a correspondent for ABC in 1973, working on documentaries. From 1976 to 1988 he was the network’s Capitol Hill correspondent, and became ABC’s chief White House correspondent in 1989.
Won an Emmy in 1991 for his Gulf War coverage.
Married his second wife, Kim Schiller, a former Fox Washington bureau chief, in 1993. Has a daughter, Virginia, from his first marriage, and two granddaughters.
Left ABC for Fox in 1996. While he at first envisioned working strictly as an analyst, he became managing editor of Fox’s Washington bureau, and the anchor of its nightly “Special Report.”
Was twice named “Best in the Business” for his White House coverage by American Journalism Review. In 2003, won the Sol Taishoff Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism.
Won the National Press Foundation’s Broadcaster of the Year Award in 2004, causing board member Geneva Overholser to resign in protest.
