Just One Quibble

Howard Kurtz pens a very nice piece about Brit Hume here. One tiny quibble about this sentence:

Hume is almost evangelical in his belief that he is fair and balanced while most of the media are not, an argument challenged by several studies showing that his program leans to the right.

Hate to say it, but that's misleading, insofar as it could be construed to mean that studies have found that his program, uniquely, has a political bias. As discussed on this blog here, a recent UCLA study did indeed note that "Special Report With Brit Hume" leaned to the right (the only other right-leaning outlet was The Washington Times), but that

The fourth most centrist outlet was "Special Report With Brit Hume" on Fox News, which often is cited by liberals as an egregious example of a right-wing outlet. While this news program proved to be right of center, the study found ABC's "World News Tonight" and NBC's "Nightly News" to be left of center. All three outlets were approximately equidistant from the center, the report found.

So, in short, Hume's program may "lean to the right" but no more than the ABC or NBC News leans to the left. Which means that if they are supposedly credible journalistic outlets, Hume certainly is, as well. And he's right -- he is more "fair and balanced" than the overwhelming majority of the MSM.

The scariest part of the story is the reference to the possibility of Hume retiring. Please, no! We tivo "Fox News Sunday" every week just for the fun of watching him become exasperated with Juan Williams.