Transcript (CSPAN): 7-9-08 Q&A - Brit Hume - Washington Managing Editor & Anchor, Fox News

Uncorrected transcript provided by Morningside Partners. C-SPAN uses its best efforts to provide accurate transcripts of its programs, but it can not be held liable for mistakes such as omitted words, punctuation, spelling, mistakes that change meaning, etc.

BRIAN LAMB, HOST: Brit Hume, if you had to go in front of a journalism class and define the term ”journalism” today, what would you say?

BRIT HUME, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: That’s a big subject today. But I think journalism is in new forms, pretty much what it’s always been, which is reporting and commentary on current events of interest to the public.

As I mentioned, many forms. But it’s, at the end of the day, it’s still reporting and analysis and opinion dispensing.

BRIAN LAMB: When in your lifetime have you been the happiest practicing journalism?

BRIT HUME: Well, I probably had the most fun, when I was working for Jack Anderson all those years ago. I was young and full of vigor and energy and there was a lot of freedom. And we had a blast there for a couple years. And I moved on to other things.

BRIAN LAMB: What’s the difference between working for Jack Anderson and anchoring the Fox show at 6:00 everyday?

BRIT HUME: Well, it – a lot of the work I did for Jack Anderson, I would report the story. It would go out under his byline with some credit to me or whoever else on the staff did it.

This is – and I didn’t have to worry about synthesizing the column together. I didn’t have to worry about any of that. I would work on one story at a time and do them. And he would make such use of them as he saw fit.

What I do now is much less about my own reporting than maybe my own news judgment.

It is – I’m really kind of a ringmaster for the work of a lot of other people, unlike a lot of programs on cable news.

My program isn’t about me. It’s really about the work of a lot of other people. It’s about the analysis and commentary of some of my colleagues. And really the reporting on the correspondents and so on. I used to do an interview segment on the show.

I don’t do that anymore, because it’ got in the away, I thought, of the show, moving along and telling you more.

BRIAN LAMB: Go back to the beginning of when you – well, it’s the night you met Rupert Murdoch. Had dinner with him over here at La Brasserie or whatever. But go back when it started for you with – Fox was beginning and you were at ABC.

BRIT HUME: Well, I was at ABC and quite by chance really I met Rupert Murdoch. And I didn’t think or imagine at the time that any would ever come of it. It was a group of journalists, I guess it was organized by ”The American Spectator” and they have something called ”The Saturday Night Club.”

It never meets on Saturday night, but they call it that anyway. And they’ll have a guest in for dinner with a bunch of journalists from time to time. On this particular night, it was at the ”La Brasserie” up here on Massachusetts Avenue. A place that’s famous for a lot of reasons. I guess it’s gone now, but – and he was the guest and he was proved to be a genial, amiable and approachable and interesting man. And it was fascinating to listen to him.

And when the dinner was over, it was late. It was a winter night as I recall it. My car was parked the other side of the restaurant from where I lived. And so, I went and got the car and turned it around up on Massachusetts Avenue, which is – that part of town up there, Massachusetts Avenue is not the great thoroughfare that is elsewhere in Washington. It’s a narrow, two-lane street.

And I turned around. And I drove back past the restaurant. There’s a guy standing out there by himself in a trench coat trying to hail a cab. It was Rupert Murdoch.

There was no entourage of aides with him. There was no parade of sedans or limousines. There was none of that. He was out there trying to catch a cab. And he wasn’t going to catch a cab up there for awhile, I didn’t think.

So, I stopped and I said, Mr. Murdoch, where you going? And he said, I’m going to The Willard. And I said, well, I’ll take you there. That’s right along the way. So, I drove him to The Willard.

And we chatted about family and ski trips or whatever. And I found him to be totally easy to talk to and genial and pleasant. And he had no mogul aura about him. None of that.

And he was news oriented. And there was – talked a little bit about what was in the news and so on. I thought he was fascinating and very different from the caricatures of him that I’ve seen elsewhere.

BRIT HUME: Well, not much happened. There was a – at one point when I was at ABC News, there was a – they were trying to get something started on the Fox Broadcast Network, a magazine show. I think he was thinking about.

And they wanted to try use that as a basis to sort of build a news division. And I didn’t think the idea worked very well or would work very well. And they asked me about it. And it was very preliminary. And it was – he wasn’t even involved. It was one of his – some of his top people, whom I liked, but the opportunity wasn’t right for me.

And then, in 1996, I was coming to the end of an eight year tour of duty as the chief White House correspondent for ABC News. And I was coming out of the White House. And I didn’t want to do that anymore.

It was – I just had enough of that. Eight years is long enough. And I was looking around to see what I might do next. And ABC News didn’t seem to have much in mind.

And then, the announcements began to come with people starting 24-hour cable channels. And ABC announced one. And I thought, this is great. They’re going to go 24 hours. That gives an old goat like me some place where I can go and do my stuff. And be kind of a maybe a sort of a veteran commentator and analyst or whatever and it’d be wonderful. And I was enthusiastic about it.

And then, Microsoft and NBC teamed up to create MSNBC and that was announced. And in the middle of all this, along comes Fox with no real domestic news organization.

They had a little Washington bureau and a few – and they had an exchange system for their stations to exchange video, but they didn’t have a Washington bureau or – they didn’t really have the instruments of a network news operation.

And here comes Rupert Murdoch and announces that they’re going to start a 24-hour cable channel. Well, the world laughed.

But not long thereafter, Disney pulled the plug on the ABC 24-hour operation. And apparently what happened is that they looked at the numbers. And they concluded that it would be x number of years before they could turn it black. It would hit the stock to the tune of however much they were able to estimate and that it wasn’t it wasn’t worth a candle.

So, now, I was working for a company, which was essentially an entertainment company. A wonderful company. Disney’s a very good company. And I’d had a wonderful experience there.

And they were bailing out on the idea of going 24 hours, even though they were the gold standard at the moment. Number one in the evening news ratings. It was, at that point, ABC News was the leader.

In the meantime, here comes Rupert Murdoch with no domestic infrastructure with the need to make an enormous capital outlay to do this. And he’s willing to take a risk with less to start with than ABC was. And I began – and I realized that the name of the company matters.

News Corporation, that’s the name of Rupert Murdoch’s company. And I realized that, and it’s proved to be true since I’ve worked there. This is a news company with some entertainment properties.

And so, what you see with News Corporation now is and you see it in the purchase of ”The Wall Street Journal” and in a multitude of other ways is, that’s the focus of this company.

That’s the willingness to put a billion dollars, or whatever it was, at risk to build the Fox News Channel. That’s the willingness to buy with the eye to greatly expanding ”The Wall Street Journal” and so on.

So, I ended up thinking that that was the place to be. If he was willing to make that – willing to take that risk, I thought, this is the kind of guy I want to work for.

And then, he hired Roger Ailes, whom I knew from covering politics. And I knew two things about Roger Ailes.

One was that he shot straight. And the other was that none but a fool would ever underestimate him. And I thought, between these two guys, I bet they’re going to make this thing go.

And I had dinner with Roger Ailes in I guess about March of 1996. And he said that he wanted to make the operating concept of Fox News, fair and balanced news.

And I thought, man, this is music to my ears, because I had long believed that there was an opportunity there for somebody who wanted to do basically three things.

One was balance all your discussion segments. Most people do that. That’s not so big a problem.

The other was to cover the stories that others are covering with a different angle. A little – journalistically legitimate different angle. And I saw them all the time.

And in fact, when I was at ABC and I never had a lot of trouble. I mean, they’d say, they’d read whatever ”The New York Times” or somebody had in the morning. And they’d say, do you want to do this – your story this way. And I’d say, no, I’d rather do it this way. And they’d say, oh, well, that makes sense. Do that.

And I thought, if you had somebody who was looking at things that way from scratch everyday, it gets to be like picking up money off the street. The opportunities to do stories legitimately in a different way. They’re all around. Or the opportunities to do stories that others aren’t interested in.

We had a wonderful example just last week, when the report came out from the administration, which the administration didn’t produce with any fanfare to Congress that said now that 15 of the 18 political benchmarks were showing satisfactory progress in Iraq.

Well, maybe so, but a year earlier the same administration had said that satisfactory progress had been made only 8 of 18. Something had obviously happened.

And we – our reporting over there had sort of indicated this. And there had been a lot of individual reports on this and that that happened.

But here it was all in one place. That’s a big story. We’ve made it a big story. I led my broadcast with it. And it was virtually ignored everywhere else. Everywhere else.

So, I’m thinking, great. And so, that was what – the opportunity to do that kind of was what drew me to Fox News.

BRIT HUME: Well, that’s something I have thought about, but basically all I can say to you know is that we’re discussing what comes next.

BRIAN LAMB: Let me go back to February the 1st, 2004, and read you a Peter Johnson story. I know you remember this in ”USA TODAY.” And I want you to parse this. The headline is, ”Brit Hume Honors – Honor Triggers Protests.”

Is Fox News fair and balanced as its motto claims? The National Press Club Foundation’s plan to honor Brit Hume angered Geneva Overholser, who says, Fox practices ”ideologically connected journalism.”

Let me just stop there for a moment. When you read that, what was your reaction?

It's fashionable to bash Fox News, but I won't go back.

I used to read all of Jack Anderson's columns. I guess I was Brit Hume fan even then, although I didn't know it.

WOW. I would have liked to have seen the interview, but I doubt it would have differed much from my mind's eye in reading it.

Thank You for posting this.

I think good interviews like this, and interviews by David Frost many years ago, can be true and revealing. I think Brit explained the origin, from his viewpoint, of Fox News, and I found that very interesting. I think his assessment of liberal bias and fairness (or lack thereof) are very insightful.

I have a greater appreciation, it grows from year to year, that the Pulitzer (and other prizes) are clubby awards given by liberals to liberals. Like the Nobel Peace prize, it is more of a dishonor than an honor.

His recounting of his son’s death by suicide was news to me. At the time of Sandy’s death, I read something that suggested a conspiracy and foul play. I thought another shoe might drop, but it never did. I guess this interview wraps it up for me.

Exactly, few in his steps. I listened to some of the interview and it was classic Hume. Should be required listening for all journalism students.

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