Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post profiles FNC’s Brit Hume…

Hume has come to dominate his time slot, with “Special Report” averaging nearly 1.2 million viewers. One of them is Charlie Gibson.

“He has a wonderful style which makes you want to hear what Brit has to say, in an age when so many people are in your face,” Gibson says.

But Hume is well aware that some people, particularly on the left, view him as a conservative hack and Bush apologist.

“It bothers me a little bit,” he says. “I think we look conservative to people who are not. . . . I knew the rap on us from Day One was going to be that we were a right-wing news outlet.” But, he says, “I believed if we tried that, it would never work.”

Hume and Fox News were among the first to jump on the charges by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth about Sen. John Kerry’s Vietnam record, with Hume pushing the controversy day after day.

As the lead panelist on “Fox News Sunday,” Hume said in August 2004 that the book by the Swift Boat Veterans “is a remarkably well-done document. It is full of detail. It is full of specifics. The charges that are being made of Kerry, of irresponsible and indeed in some cases mendacious conduct in his service in Vietnam, are made by people who were there.”

The Center for Media and Public Affairs, in a 2004 study, found that “Special Report” coverage of President Bush was positive 60 percent of the time, while its evaluations of John Kerry were negative by a 5-to-1 margin. Hume says he was fair to Kerry and that the media gave far more scrutiny to Bush’s National Guard record.