BOSTON — Fox News Channel again finds itself in the belly of the beast,
namely the donkey-themed Democratic party's quadrennial national
convention.
It's otherwise a different story. The "Fair and Balanced" network
saunters into town as a solid No. 1 in the cable news Nielsen ratings.
It must be doing something right, and not necessarily always right of
center. Former ABC News stalwart Brit Hume, who joined Fox news at its
inception in 1996, said he's not looking for conservative angles, just
new ones.
"It's not so much addressing an imbalance in coverage, but just doing it
in a different way," he said after his regular stint as a panelist on
Fox News Sunday . "Get it right and be different. It's a huge element of
what we do. It's what I think our viewers appreciate."
Four summers ago, Fox enjoyed a ratings surge during the Republican
convention but remained well behind front-running CNN. At the subsequent
Democratic gathering, though, Fox fell with a thud into third place in
the cable news wars, even trailing ratings-starved MSNBC. It cemented a
prevailing perception that Fox and its viewers greatly prefer the
company of elephants.
"It's possible that CNN will win the ratings here. I wouldn't consider
it at all unlikely," Mr. Hume said. "If we don't win here, people will
say, 'You see, it's a right-wing network.' But if we go to New York and
win the Republican convention, will people say the same thing about CNN
that they'd say about us? I wonder."
At a production meeting earlier Sunday morning, Mr. Hume also wondered
aloud whether Fox should devote any on-air attention to CNN's newest
wrinkle, a convention floor anchor platform that might be blocking the
view of several state delegations.
"The question is whether CNN's little floor stage is worth a . . . well,
it's a hoot." Mr. Hume said.
Meanwhile, at least two high-level Democrats played ball with Fox on
Sunday morning. New Mexico governor and convention chairman Bill
Richardson and Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell parried with Fox News
Sunday host Chris Wallace, who told them "Great job" afterward.
There was an easy camaraderie among the three, with Mr. Wallace jokingly
telling Mr. Rendell, "I can ask the meanest question I want, and you
just go right to your talking points."
Mr. Wallace left ABC News late last year to take over Fox News Sunday
from Tony Snow. He quickly landed Democratic guests who previously had
shunned the network, most notably Hillary Clinton. National Public Radio
commentator Juan Williams, who regularly supplies a left-of-center voice
on the program, said he feels less pigeonholed at Fox than he did as a
co-host of CNN's Crossfire.
"At CNN they'd say, 'You really have to hold up the left portion, and
you have to be the black guy.' Here it's more intellectually free. They
have that strong, conservative position anchored, so I'm the variable.
Sometimes I even agree with Brit."
Still, Fox enters the Democratic convention in the crosshairs of
Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism. Co-produced by the
openly liberal MoveOn.org, the new documentary film features former Fox
news personnel saying they regularly received Republican marching orders
from their bosses.
"I've seen the film," Mr. Wallace said. "It's about as biased and
intellectually dishonest as Michael Moore's Fahrenheit: 9/11 but
without any of the sense of humor or production qualities. On a personal
level, it doesn't bother me because it's so foreign and unrepresentative
of the place I work. Has it made it more difficult to get Democrats on
the show? Not a bit."
Mr. Hume said that Fox is fair game for envious enemies.
"We had a choice," he said. "We could be liked and accepted and popular
with our competitors, or we could be No. 1. We couldn't be both."
E-mail ebark@dallasnews.com
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