The fall of a house? Roger Simon is right to celebrate the respective divestments of Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather but he criticizes the position of anchorman itself, which seems a step too far. Let's grant that broadcast network news, forced (or perfectly content) to compress a day or more of news into the latter half of the Eastern dinner hour, is increasingly showing its age and inferiority to tireless cable news networks and the nimble, instantly self-correcting plexus that is the blogosphere. With a single half-hour slot in an entire day's programming, a headline news host on a broadcast network will inevitably gain prominence: the Big Three showed us as much last century, and a torch successfully passed from Walter Cronkite to Dan Rather confirmed that the chair was as important as the man. Host broadcast news, and you'll find your likeness on the network's coat of arms.
Simon excludes Brit Hume from his definition of "anchor" to spare him undue criticism, but this risks short-changing Hume. The former ABC News journalist and chief White House correspondent does, after all, host an eponymous television program that runs the whole dinner hour. His duties — introduction, interviewing, moderating — aren't any different than his broadcast contemporaries'. If we're to trust the dictionary, to "anchor" is "to narrate or coordinate (a newscast)."
Hume stands apart from the broadcast triumvirate for reasons other than what Simon has chosen. I offer three; two objective and the third subjective, though compelling. First, simply by virtue of working on a 24-hour network, Brit is one of over a dozen men and women hosting news programs outside of prime time. If he represents Fox News, he does so alongside Neil Cavuto, John Gibson, Linda Vester, the whole of Fox News Live's rotation, and others. Brit Hume contributes; he does not dominate. Second, as a corollary, Hume is not expected to bear the standard for Fox. No matter how invaluable his administration and the field work of his contributing journalists are to the network or the national conversation, Fox News can confidently report without Brit Hume's name on the by-line because it requires a dozen more of his experience and stature to provide a single day of coverage.
Third, consequent to the second difference between Special Report's anchor and his broadcast competitors: Hume is in no position to consider himself synonymous with the network, let alone its keeper. Jennings, Brokaw and Rather exemplify brand-name journalism, the latter-20th-Century's prevailing elite model that came to expect a public audience to consider a source of news more valuable than the quality of information itself. Once identity supercedes commodity, only politics can support a merchant who rides on reputation while churning out a substandard product. Should politics fail, the merchant will follow downward.
Brit Hume anchors a one-hour program on Fox News because he is an honorable, respected journalist — not because he is Brit Hume. What Roger Simon admires in Hume is Hume's visible desire to be known by the quality of his work and never, no matter how great the dividends of professional respect, by name alone. The same cannot be said for anchors Jennings, Brokaw and Rather, who each traded the title of craftsman for celebrity long ago.