Special Report with Brit Hume

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Special Report with Brit Hume

Title card for Special Report
Genre Political news/talk program
Presented by Brit Hume
(Friday substitutes are listed here)
Country of origin Flag of the United States United States
Language(s) English
Production
Location(s) Washington DC
Camera setup Multi-camera
Running time 60 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel Fox News Channel
Picture format 480i NTSC
Original run 1998 – present
External links
Official website
IMDb profile
U.S. Network Evening News   edit
Program Main Anchor
ABC World News Charles Gibson
CBS Evening News Katie Couric
NBC Nightly News Brian Williams
CNN The Situation Room Wolf Blitzer
MSNBC Race 08
Hardball
David Gregory
Chris Matthews
FNC Fox Report
Special Report
Shepard Smith
Brit Hume
Home Shopping Network Home Shopping News Adam Freeman
HLN Headline Prime Mike Galanos
PBS NewsHour Jim Lehrer
UNI Noticiero Univision Jorge Ramos
Maria Elena Salinas|
TEL Noticiero Telemundo Pedro Sevcec

Special Report with Brit Hume is an American television program appearing on Fox News Channel. It is aired live each Monday through Friday at 6:00pm ET.

Contents

[edit] About the show

The show is hosted by Brit Hume, Washington managing editor for the network. The show reports on the day's events, usually focusing on political stories out of the nation's capital, particularly on the U.S. President, the United States Congress, and the Supreme Court. The show has been a part of the Fox News program lineup since 1998, and is the number one political program in all of cable news. There have been reports that Hume plans to step down as host of Special Report at the end of 2008.[1]

[edit] Format breakdown

A typical show begins with news stories featuring various Fox News correspondents, followed by an interview conducted by Hume of political newsmakers or pundits. After the halfway point of the show (and a short break for current headlines), Hume presents what he humorously refers to as "the most scintillating two minutes in television," (or some variation of the same), the "Political Grapevine" — a collection of short items, sometimes humorous, about minor political happenings. Hume sometimes uses this segment to point out oddities in coverage of a story by competing news media. (In the early days of the Iraq War, this segment was referred to by Hume as the "Wartime Grapevine.")

The best-known part of Special Report is Hume's discussion with "The Fox All-Stars," a panel of three political reporters and columnists.

The show ends with a comedic clip, usually taken from the preceding night's shows by David Letterman, Jay Leno, Jimmy Kimmel, or sometimes MADtv (which airs Saturday nights on the Fox network, also owned by News Corporation), or Saturday Night Live. Hume then usually signs off with, "That's Special Report for this time, please tune us in next time, and in the meantime, more news is on the way— fair, balanced and unafraid."

[edit] Allegations of Bias

See also: Fox News Channel controversies

A study published by Tim Groseclose, a professor of political science at UCLA, comparing political bias from such news outlets as the New York Times, USA Today, the Drudge Report, the Los Angeles Times, and Fox News’ Special Report, concluded that Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume had an Americans for Democratic Action rating that was closest to the political center, and that Special Report was the most centrist news program on television. Groseclose used the number of times a host cited a particular think tank on his or her program and compared it with the number of times a member of the U.S. Congress cited a think tank, correlating that with the politician's Americans for Democratic Action rating. [1] Some have disputed this rating based on a methodology that is allegedly questionable, especially regarding the fact that this study claimed that self-declared conservative publications such as the Drudge Report and the Wall Street Journal were actually liberal in their slant as well.[citation needed]

The methods used to calculate this bias, however, have been shown to have faults as explained by professor of Computer Science and the Director of Linguistic Data Consortium at the University of Pennsylvania Mark Liberman.[2][3] Mark states that the model chosen leads to "very implausible psychological claims, for which no evidence is presented." and concludes by saying he thinks "that many if not most of the complaints directed against G&M are motivated in part by ideological disagreement -- just as much of the praise for their work is motivated by ideological agreement. It would be nice if there were a less politically fraught body of data on which such modeling exercises could be explored."[2]

The documentary Outfoxed pointed out a study by the liberal Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting which found that a full 83% of all guests brought onto Hume's program were conservative or Republican and only 17% were liberal or Democratic.[citation needed]

The Center for Media and Public Affairs found that, for between October 1 and December 15, 2007, the first half hour of Special Report provided almost a 50-50 split of positive and negative stories on both the Republican and Democratic candidates.[4]

The regular makeup of the so-called "All-Star Panel" is largely Republican. Mort Kondracke is a self-described "independent moderate", while Charles Krauthammer, Fred Barnes and Brit Hume are all self-described conservative Republicans.

[edit] "Fox All-Star" Panel

[edit] Facts

Until 2007, news headlines during the live version of the broadcast were provided by Shepard Smith. (Note: This practice has been reinstated as of November 2007.)

A substitute host usually appears on the Friday edition of the program. The substitution gives Hume a chance to appear as a conservative panelist on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace. Substitute hosts include Jim Angle (Fox News chief Washington correspondent), Bret Baier, Chris Wallace, and Brian Wilson. Lately, it has almost always been Baier.

Special Report with Brit Hume is broadcast at the network's Capitol Hill studio in Washington. However, on Election Night (or on nights the primary elections are held), the program is broadcast in the network's New York studios instead of its Washington, DC studio.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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