Salon.com > Brit Hume

Fox News assesses the data

Sun, 04 Nov 2012 23:16:00 +0000

In the face of polling data that seems to be favoring the reelection of President Barack Obama, professional poll-watchers on Fox News Sunday confronted the cognitive dissonance of three possible outcomes: 1) The polls are wrong, 2) Mitt Romney’s ground game will overcome the public opinion deficit, 3) Mitt Romney will lose.

After parsing the difference between national polls and state polls, Fox anchor Brit Hume concludes, “It’s hard to imagine as a political journalist that all these polls are off but the discrepancy is puzzling.”

Watch:

h/t Raw Story

Hume complains of “double standard” on Woods comments

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 01:10:00 +0000

Brit Hume is sticking with his story.

The Fox News personality has previously claimed there was anti-Christian bias at work in the reaction to his telling Tiger Woods, "Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world." In one recent interview, he continued that theme, and extended it.

Hume told the conservative CNSNews.com, "There is a double standard. If I had said, for example, that what Tiger Woods needed to do was become more deeply engaged in his Buddhist faith or to adopt the ideas of Hinduism, which I think would be of great spiritual value to him, I doubt anybody would have said anything."

Fox’s Hume digs in deeper on Woods comments

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 14:41:00 +0000

When Fox News' Brit Hume told Tiger Woods, "Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world," he wasn't proselytizing. At least, that's what he said Monday night, when he discussed those comments with his network's Bill O'Reilly.

The exchange between O'Reilly and Hume on the subject:

O'REILLY: Was that proselytizing?

HUME: I don't think so. I mean, look, Tiger Woods is somebody I've always rooted for as a golfer and as a man. I greatly admired him over the years, and I always have said to people it was the content of his character that made him, beyond his extraordinary golf skills, so admirable.

Now we know that the content of his character was not what we thought it was. He is paying a frightful price for these revelations. I - - my sense is that he has basically lost his family, and there's a lot of talk about the endorsements he's lost. But that pales, I suspect, in his mind, with what he's lost otherwise. And my sense about Tiger is that he needs something that Christianity, especially provides and gives and offers. And that is redemption and forgiveness.

And I was -- I was really meaning to say in those comments yesterday more about Christianity than I was about anything else. I mentioned the Buddhism only because his mother is a Buddhist and he has apparently said that he is a Buddhist. I'm not sure how seriously he practices that. But I think -- I think that the -- Jesus Christ offers Tiger Woods something that Tiger Woods badly needs.

O'REILLY: Now, if he does go that route, then he would be accused of -- remember in the Bill Clinton years, he got in trouble, he had the Bible and Jesse Jackson and they were praying and, you know, wouldn't Americans...

HUME: That's true, Bill. That wouldn't -- and that wasn't the first time. Remember Chuck Colson, who is one of the leading lights of Watergates, if you will.

O'REILLY: But he made a true conversion.

HUME: He did. And I'm -- what I'm saying is if Tiger Woods were to make a true conversion, we would know it. It would show through in his -- in his being, and he would know it, above all. And he would feel the extraordinary blessing that that would be. And -- and it would shine because he is so prominent. It would be -- it would be a shining light, and I think it would be a -- it would be a magnificent thing to witness.

O'REILLY: Now, what kind of reaction did you get when you said that? A lot of letters and e-mails and things?

HUME: I got some letters and e-mails from people who were like me, who are believers who said, "Great. Right on. Right on. Way to go." I've heard a lot of terrible comments from people who claim that I was a pompous jerk who had no business mouthing off on the subject and that I shouldn't have belittled the Buddhist faith and so on. I really wasn't trying to belittle and demean.

O'REILLY: I don't think so either. What drives -- what do you think drives the negative comments about -- Buddhism aside, I don't think we're trying to denigrate Buddhism. But what do you think drives the negative comments about Christianity?

HUME: It has always been a puzzling thing to me. The Bible even speaks of it, that, you know, you speak the name, "Jesus Christ," and I don't -- and I don't mean to make a pun here, but all hell breaks loose. And -- and it has always been thus. It is explosive. I didn't even say the name in that way. I simply spoke of the Christian faith. But that was enough to trigger this reaction. It triggers a very powerful reaction in people who do not share the faith and who do not believe in it.

Fox’s Hume slammed for telling Tiger to convert

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 16:25:00 +0000

When you're a celebrity, everyone seems to know how you should best run your life -- and they're not shy about offering advice on that score, publicly. Take Tiger Woods, whose dirty laundry has been very public recently in the wake of revelations about his extramarital affairs. On Sunday, Fox News' Brit Hume decided to tell Woods how he can get things back on track:

Tiger Woods will recover as a golfer. Whether he can recover as a person, I think, is a very open question. And it's a tragic situation ... But the Tiger Woods that emerges once the news value dies out of this scandal, the extent to which he can recover, seems to me to depend on his faith.

He's said to be a Buddhist. I don't think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So my message to Tiger would be, "Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world."

The reaction to Hume's comments has been largely negative.

Uh, Brit?

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 15:00:00 +0000

It's never good to be the last one to arrive at an outrage party. Actually, it can be downright embarrassing: Just ask Fox News anchor Brit Hume.

On Monday, in his "Political Grapevine" segment, Hume took up the cause of the latest conservative to be oppressed by unhinged liberals, Princeton student Francisco Nava. "Conservative students and faculty at Princeton University are questioning the absence of campus and community outrage -- following the beating of a student leading a morality movement at the school," Hume said. "The New York Sun reports Francisco Nava was attacked by two men last week and told to shut up. The beating came two days after Nava received death threats by e-mail.

"Nava -- who is a Mormon -- wrote in the student newspaper that a school campaign to distribute free condoms on campus was a 'tacit sponsorship of hookup sex.' Three other members of the morally conservative Anscombe Society also received the threats, along with a conservative professor."

Fox News’ hourlong Petraeus and Crocker commercial

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 03:30:00 +0000

We didn't think it was possible, but this time, we actually gave Fox News too much credit.

We expected that the exclusive hourlong interview that anchor Brit Hume did Monday night with Gen. David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, would actually be a journalistic affair. That seemed especially necessary given the pre-interview criticism Petraeus and Crocker had come under for giving their big post-congressional hearing exclusive to a news source widely seen as a shill for the Bush administration and an apologist for the war in Iraq.

Well, we were wrong. Indeed, the hour could not even fairly be described as an interview. It was an advertisement, an opportunity for Petraeus and Crocker to reprise their testimony unchallenged.

Iraq, Iran, what’s the difference?

Fri, 22 Dec 2006 20:48:00 +0000

Since Fox News has been so ready to trumpet every success story coming out of Iraq, you'd think they'd at least try to get them right. But if you go to Fox News' website right now, you'll see that Brit Hume couldn't do that last night.

In his Grapevine segment, Hume discussed the recent handover of the province of Najaf to Iraqi troops, and the ceremony, which involved Iraqi soldiers tearing apart a live rabbit and biting the heads off of frogs. Except he said it was an Iranian ceremony, and the mistake is repeated in headlines all over the site. Oops.

While we're on the subject, check out this article also posted to FoxNews.com -- discussing holiday cards sent to detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Fox actually goes ahead and makes fun of the detainees. No "innocent until proven guilty here." Fair and balanced, it's not.

George W. Bush, on the couch and naming names

Thu, 15 Dec 2005 14:12:00 +0000

George W. Bush sat down for an interview with Fox News anchor Brit Hume Wednesday, and the result was some sort of political Rorschach test on names in the news.

Sounding more like a psychiatrist than a journalist, Hume began his chat with the president by saying, "I want to ask you about some of the people around you and your relationship with them and how they stand with you." Here's how Bush responded.

On Donald Rumsfeld: "He's done a heck of a job. He's conducted two wars, and at the same time is out to transfer my military from a military that was constructed for the post-Cold War to one that is going to be constructed to fight terrorism." Asked if Rumsfeld will stay through the end of Bush's second term, the president said: "Yes. Well, the end of my term is a long time, but I'll tell you, he's doing a heck of a good job. I have no intention of changing him." Translation: I'm not firing Rumsfeld, but he's outta here. If the equivocation on whether Rumsfeld is staying through the end of the term weren't clue enough, there's the odd use of the present perfect tense in the beginning of the answer -- "He's done a heck of a job." And then there's the use of "heck of a job" itself. Bush said that about FEMA director Michael Brown just before he was sent packing to Margaritaville. What does it mean that Rumsfeld gets two HOAJs? And is anyone else a little frightened when the president starts referring to the U.S. armed forces as "my military"?

Are we excited yet?

Wed, 26 Jan 2000 17:00:00 +0000

Every four years, the Iowa caucuses provide a start to the presidential nomination race, a rare glimpse of farm subsidy issues and a preview of how television plans to cover an electoral process that many Americans have opted out of, except perhaps as spectators.

And can you blame them? Pre-election hype began over a year ago and the narratives of George W. Bush's "coronation" and Al Gore's vulnerability already seem played out. Not to mention the brief but exciting episodes covering the rise and fall of challengers Bill Bradley and John McCain. So now the challenge facing the familiar faces of cable and (to a lesser extent) network news lies in creating some interest among viewers. And, of course, themselves.

Take-home test

Mon, 13 Dec 1999 18:00:00 +0000

By now most of the politerati agree that the pop quiz about foreign leaders that George W. Bush failed was not a fair measure of his intellectual abilities. But the concern about whether he has the candle-power to be president lingers.

At the Dec. 2 debate in New Hampshire, Fox News Channel moderator Brit Hume asked Bush what he reads, and Bush cited a biography of Dean Acheson, who was secretary of state for President Harry Truman. His aides later identified the book as "Acheson: The Secretary of State Who Created the American World," by James Chace, a highly regarded expert on international affairs.

That's certainly egghead reading material. But at the next debate, when CNN's Judy Woodruff asked Bush what lessons he had drawn from Acheson's career in foreign affairs, he barely answered the question, offering only familiar bromides from his stump speech, such as "we must promote the peace" and "free trade brings ... hope and prosperity."

Send in the clowns

Fri, 03 Dec 1999 17:04:00 +0000

Media hordes converged on the plush studios of television station WMUR Wednesday night to witness
the first debate featuring all six Republican presidential candidates, including
(gasp!) front-running Texas Gov. George W. Bush.

Before any of us could even catch a glimpse of Bush, however, or even of href="http://www.salonmagazine.com/news/feature/1999/12/02/arizona/index.html">Arizona Sen.
John McCain, who has suddenly reached a statistical dead heat with Bush in local polls,
or quintillionaire publisher Steve Forbes, who has slowly been unloading a barrage of
negative ammo against Bush, a surprise presidential candidate and outspoken pro wrestler
(!) suddenly emerged to provide us with a respite from politics as usual.

It wasn't who you think, though. It was a bald, bearded, beefy, possibly deranged Nashua
resident calling himself "Lobsterman."

Sam Houston, we have a problem

Fri, 27 Aug 1999 16:00:00 +0000

And now for the next installment of "As the Rumor Mill Churns": Sponsored this week by Coke ...

Conservative Web site NewsMax.com, whose columnist Carl Limbacher claims to have been the first to break Gennifer Flowers' allegations that Clinton told her he'd used cocaine (an accusation the White House flatly denied Tuesday, saying, "The president has never done cocaine [in] his entire life"), is upping the allegation-crazed ante.

In a story headlined "Did Bill Clinton Overdose on Cocaine?" NewsMax is looking to get a little extra mileage out of old, unproven coke-related rumors that have been knocking about in conservative circles since at least 1996: that President Clinton has not only snorted the powdery white stuff, but that he nearly OD'd on one fateful occasion in the early '80s.