If some Democratic primary candidate wants to build momentum among likely primary voters, s/he could issue a statement right now that s/he will not participate in a debate hosted by Fox News until "news anchor" Brit Hume apologizes for his over-the-line ad hominen attacks on Representative Murtha.

Let's see someone show that they know how to use the bully pulpit to set the perimeters of the debate.

qqve: let's talk about that female commentator on Pacifica Radio

What? Let's find out who she is and have her moderate the Republican debate, then! The nuts today are about as serious as commentators as Hume is as a journalist.

Juan Williams is invited on Fox specifically to be a purported voice from the left. As Kristol is to be from the neocon right. Hume, by contrast, is presented as the ostensibly neutral moderator.

Hume isn't neutral, and has given up any pretense of being that. Which is fine, but he is then what Glenn suggests in his 3rd update, an opinionizer and not a mere truthseeker and fact-finder, "reporting" for you to "decide." He's telling you what the right decision is.

As for that wench on Pacifica Radio, both sides have their cretins. However, there are far more on the right, the right has hegemony over talk radio, and moreover, the foulness from the right often is so maintstreamed it is no longer recognized as foul.

I might take you more seriously, Mr. Greenwald, if you were equally hard on Juan Williams, who spouts a predictable Left line on that same news show. Guess it doesn't count then, eh, Glenn?

I don't think Juan Williams is a news journalist. I think he's an opinion jouranlist, just as Mona said. You will find people like Mara Liasson on those panels who will never express a partisan opinion because they hold themselves out as news journalists and won't cross certain lines. But Brit Hume does not abide by those limits (nor, I would agree, does Juan Williams), which is why neither is or should be considered a news journalist. But Hume is considered that, and Fox holds him out as that.

Brit Hume's relationship to a "real", objective journalist is the same as Fox's relationship to a real news network. Fox is so clearly a propaganda organ for the right-wing authoritarian party that it makes perfect sense that they have a PR flak like Hume as a news anchor.

Unfortunately propaganda works and given Fox's ratings, it's clear many people are soaking it up. To balance things out, we need a far-left network with the nightly news hosted by Noam Chomsky and regular appearance on their Sunday morning talk show by Dennis Kucinich and Bernie Sanders. :)

Brit Hume is _employed as_ a journalist, therefore he 'is' a 'journalist'. The basis for that sentence is the label that he gets as a consequence of his job description, not whether his actions are consistent with either the job description or the social/political/cultural role of a journalist.

Going further into this Humpty Dumpty attempt to get words to mean whatever an employer wants them to mean, other people employed as 'journalists' put up with this because they have to appear 'professional' in order to keep their jobs, status, and income. And, we all 'know' that the mainstream media has a 'liberal bias', if one of those 'liberal' journalists is critical of Brit Hume for his 'conservative' statements they are obviously misperceiving Brit Hume's straight up Americanism for partisan bias...a sad and unprofessional example of unprofessional partisan bias on their part. That poor unjustly accussed Brit Hume, bravely trying to be a good journalist in a liberal-dominated environment. Those liberals, they're just trying to say the grapes are sour out of spite about how that plucky Brit Hume bravely tells the public the truth.

With twisted factesque logic like that Brit Hume is almost immune to any journalism-related criticism. Conservatives painting themselves as oppressed underdogs has been a brilliant strategic move. However journalism is still supposed to be about _facts_, the weak spot for 'conservative journalists' (as opposed to journalists who are conservative) is the frequency with which they state as fact things that are demonstratably not true at the time that they said them. However fact-checking folks like Brit Hume requires being both very thorough and very clear in both writing and citations, the right will make lots of noise about being misquoted, misinterpreted, and lied about. Any errors in detail will be improperly exploited... Brit Hume and his cohort are quite willing to tell lies, the more that their lies are exposed the lower their status will be, but it will not be a short struggle.

Brit Hume's show is a mixture of news and opinion. There are straight news reports intermixed with various people opinionating about the news, all moderated by Hume.

Many a journalist started out as a shoe-leather reporter and when on to become an opinionator: David Brooks, Richard Cohen, Maureen Dowd, on and on. No one gets upset when they appear on, say, "Meet the Press" and bring a combination of reporting and opinion on a given subject. No one calls David Broder "not a journalist" because he mixes informed opinion into his reporting.

That is what Hume does. He earned his reporter's credentials years ago, way more than Mr. Greenwald has done. Hume now brings some opinionating into his work because that's the way his show is designed to be.

I suspect Mr. Greenwald is less upset that some opinions are being stated (cf. the mention of Juan Williams below that go unmentioned) and more upset at what the opinions happen to be. In short, Mr. Greenwald is nothing more than a hack himself who is highly selective about his outrage.

PS. Hume happens to be correct that the Democratic party as a whole is weak on defense and prone to surrender. Remember Mario Cumo's famous remark when Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990: "Just give him an island or two in the Persian Gulf and maybe he'll be happy."