Moving to the Right

He was not only having fun, he was proud of his 28-year-old son, Sandy, who had just signed a contract as a Fox contributor and was writing for the Hill newspaper and several magazines.

On Feb. 22, Sandy Hume killed himself with a hunting rifle in his Arlington apartment. He had been arrested the night before for driving under the influence, had tried to hang himself in a D.C. jail cell and was released after being evaluated in a psychiatric hospital.

"It's a moment of truth when you realize what you believe," Hume says. "I realized I believed in God." He had been "a fallen Christian," Hume says, but "it was such a devastating loss I was thinking, 'How in the world am I going to get through this?' I had this odd thought that I would get a phone call: 'Brit, this is God.' I had this idea that somehow I was going to be okay and God was going to rescue me."

Why such a promising young journalist took his life was a mystery. "The proximate cause was the arrest for DUI, which he believed, for reasons that are not entirely clear, was going to be ruinous. . . . He was manifestly depressed about it."

Was Hume racked with parental guilt? "It was a great help to me that I'd had a very good relationship with him. I didn't have to live with a lot of regrets about how we'd gotten along."

Within six weeks, he had received 973 Mass cards. "I cannot tell you how buoyed I felt," Hume says. "I thought, this is the face of God. I just got on with my life." Hume now struggles "with trying to make Washington political journalism consistent with an effort to lead a Christian life."

He says he still thinks about his son every day.

Thoughts of Retiring

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.