Jul 16, 2025 01:44 AM
NEXT UP WITH MARK HALPERIN
https://youtu.be/cscERIf8BT8
VIDEO INTRO: [ ... Political bias in the news media...] Is it worse now than it was back when Clinton was president?
HUME: Well, I think it's gotten worse, Mark. I'm sorry to say. And part of it is, I think, that people get into journalism for different reasons, than when I was coming along.
In my case, it was because I couldn't find any other job at the time, but a lot of reporters thought it was interesting.
In those days, the custom of neutral news coverage was deeply ingrained, and that's how you were taught to cover the news. And if you let any bias or opinion slip into your copy -- it would be Xed out, and you'd be criticized for it by the city editor or by your editor, whoever it was. And I think that tradition has faded.
And I also think that the arrival on the national scene of Donald Trump has accelerated the process. Because if you were trying to design somebody that journalists would not like, you could hardly do better than Donald Trump.
Rich, crude in some ways, vulgar, full of braggadocio. Not really a [left-wing] liberal, except in some ways before he really got into politics.
So I think he was, you know, a person designed to be disliked. And journalists were attracted to the idea that the man constituted a danger to the American system. They treated his election in 2016 as a national emergency, and felt it was their job to put out the fire -- which is to say, to try to bring him down. Which they most certainly tried to do, and in my view made fools of themselves in the process.
HALPERIN: And actually helped Trump?
HUME: Well, in the end it did, because it was so bad, and so obvious, not just what journalists did, but what Democratic Party prosecutors did. What the intelligence community to some extent did. All those things became clear to the public. And I think because of that, they ended up helping him in the end...
NBC’s auto-pen "scoop" fail and the bigger bias problem, with Brit Hume ... https://youtu.be/cscERIf8BT8
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/cscERIf8BT8
https://youtu.be/cscERIf8BT8
VIDEO INTRO: [ ... Political bias in the news media...] Is it worse now than it was back when Clinton was president?
HUME: Well, I think it's gotten worse, Mark. I'm sorry to say. And part of it is, I think, that people get into journalism for different reasons, than when I was coming along.
In my case, it was because I couldn't find any other job at the time, but a lot of reporters thought it was interesting.
In those days, the custom of neutral news coverage was deeply ingrained, and that's how you were taught to cover the news. And if you let any bias or opinion slip into your copy -- it would be Xed out, and you'd be criticized for it by the city editor or by your editor, whoever it was. And I think that tradition has faded.
And I also think that the arrival on the national scene of Donald Trump has accelerated the process. Because if you were trying to design somebody that journalists would not like, you could hardly do better than Donald Trump.
Rich, crude in some ways, vulgar, full of braggadocio. Not really a [left-wing] liberal, except in some ways before he really got into politics.
So I think he was, you know, a person designed to be disliked. And journalists were attracted to the idea that the man constituted a danger to the American system. They treated his election in 2016 as a national emergency, and felt it was their job to put out the fire -- which is to say, to try to bring him down. Which they most certainly tried to do, and in my view made fools of themselves in the process.
HALPERIN: And actually helped Trump?
HUME: Well, in the end it did, because it was so bad, and so obvious, not just what journalists did, but what Democratic Party prosecutors did. What the intelligence community to some extent did. All those things became clear to the public. And I think because of that, they ended up helping him in the end...
NBC’s auto-pen "scoop" fail and the bigger bias problem, with Brit Hume ... https://youtu.be/cscERIf8BT8