Hume first worked for
The Hartford Times, and later for United Press International and the
Baltimore Evening Sun. He then worked for syndicated columnist Jack Anderson from 1970 to 1972, and later for Richard Pollak, founding editor of
[MORE] (a monthly media review published in the 1970s), as a Washington Editor during the mid-1970s.
During his time with
[MORE], Hume worked for ABC for 23 years from 1973–1996, when he left to work for Fox News Channel. From 1973 to 1976, Hume worked as a consultant for ABC's documentary division.
From 1976 to 1988, Hume worked as Capitol Hill correspondent; in 1989, he became ABC's chief White House correspondent.
In 1991, Hume won an Emmy Award for his Gulf War coverage. He was also twice named "Best in the Business" as a White House correspondent by the
American Journalism Review in a readers' poll.
In January, 1997, he left ABC for Fox News. By the time Hume left, he had worked on many ABC shows including
World News Tonight With Peter Jennings,
Nightline, and
This Week.
Hume has contributed to such publications as
Harper's,
The Atlantic,
The New Republic, and
The Weekly Standard. He has also written two books:
- (a memoir of his days working with Jack Anderson)
Hume reported a story for Anderson's "Washington Merry-Go-Round" column that after ITT Corporation had contributed $400,000 to the 1972 Republican National Convention the Nixon Department of Justice had settled the antitrust case against ITT.
Anderson published a series of classified documents indicating the Nixon administration, contrary to its public pronouncements, had tilted in favor of Pakistan during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. After those revelations, Anderson and his staff, including Hume and his family were briefly under surveillance by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1972.
The agents code-named Hume "eggnog" and observed his family going about their daily business. [[Family Jewels (Central Intelligence Agency)|These documents]] came to light during the [[Gerald Ford|Ford]] administration during Congressional hearings, and more recently as the result of a [[Freedom of Information Act]] lawsuit.
On December 16, 2008, Hume appeared as a guest on
The O'Reilly Factor and announced that his last day in the anchor chair would be December 23. When asked how he would spend his time in retirement, Hume stated "Three G's; God, granddaughters and golf."
On December 23, 2008, he hosted his final episode of
Special Report as anchor, announcing that Bret Baier, the chief White House correspondent for Fox News, would be his replacement. He will return to Fox News as a senior political analyst (in fact, his first appearance in this role took place about ten minutes after the end of his last show on the Fox Report) and will remain a panelist on Fox News Sunday.
Political orientation
Hume has been described as a "committed conservative", and several studies have shown that his
Special Report leaned to the right, although he himself avers that he is fair and balanced. In accepting the William F. Buckley, Jr. Award for Media Excellence from the conservative Media Research Center, he expressed his gratitude for
the tremendous amount of material that the Media Research Center provided me for so many years when I was anchoring Special Report. I don't know what we would have done without them. It was a daily, sort of a buffet of material to work from, and we - we -- we certainly made tremendous use of it.
Comments on Tiger Woods
On January 3, 2010, as a guest commentator on
Fox News Sunday Hume offered advice to Tiger Woods that he might turn his faith to Christianity. Hume's comments came in the wake of the revelation of Tiger Woods' habitual adultery and the resulting deterioration of his relationship with his family. Hume stated on the show that:
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 for him. I think he's lost his family, it's not clear to me if he'll be able to have a relationship with his children, 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.'
Hume was criticized for these comments, but he stood firm with his remarks and reiterated them the following day on
The O'Reilly Factor with Bill O'Reilly. Hume insisted to O'Reilly that he never meant to insult Buddhism, and stated that:
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.
This explanation also drew criticism from his original critics as having been trying to defend his previous actions. Hume gave reason for his strong feelings on Christianity in an interview where he explained how he committed his life to Jesus Christ "in a way that was very meaningful" to him in the aftermath of his son's death by suicide in 1998.{{cite news| url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/04/AR2010010403101.html | work=The Washington Post | title=Brit Hume's off message: Have faith, Tiger Woods, as long as it's Christianity | first=
