Despite several polls showing Senator John Kerry narrowing the gap with President George W. Bush -- and one poll showing Kerry leading Bush -- FOX News Channel managing editor and chief Washington correspondent Brit Hume declared that “new polls ... show President Bush still ahead in a race largely unchanged since last week's debate.”

In the opening headlines of the October 4 edition of FOX News Channel's Special Report with Brit Hume, Hume ignored three polls -- CBS/New York Times, CNN/USA Today/Gallup, and Newsweek -- that show Kerry leading or tied with Bush:

HUME: Next on Special Report, new polls just out today show President Bush still ahead in a race largely unchanged since last week's debate. But those polls found John Kerry a decisive winner in that debate.

After the commercial break, Hume expanded on his headline, focusing exclusively on the only two polls -- ABC/Washington Post and Pew -- that show the horse race “largely unchanged” since the debate:

HUME: Two new polls out today suggest that people overwhelmingly think John Kerry won last week's debate with President Bush but haven't much changed their views of who should be president.

A Pew Center survey found likely voters still supporting the president ...

An ABC News poll out, meanwhile, shows the president up five points ...

Only later during the “Grapevine” segment did Hume acknowledge the Newsweek poll that shows Kerry ahead, and he did so while challenging Newsweek's methodology:

HUME: A Newsweek survey that came out over the weekend has revived a controversy over sampling in political polling. The new poll gave John Kerry a two-point lead over President Bush. But the voter sample -- that is, the people questioned -- turned out to be 36 percent Democrats, 34 percent Republicans. The previous Newsweek poll, which had 39 percent Republicans and only 30 percent Democrats, gave the president an eleven-point lead.

As Media Matters for America has noted, on September 7, John Zogby, president and CEO of independent polling firm Zogby International, criticized the previous Newsweek poll, writing that the poll's sample skewed Republican, while in 1996 and 2000, Democrats exceeded Republicans by 5 percent and 4 percent respectively. Hume did not note this criticism either then or now.

On the “FOX All-Star panel,” Hume continued his efforts to discredit the polls favorable to Kerry while touting those favorable to Bush. After a repeat presentation of the two polls favorable to Bush (plus a third poll, Zogby, which showed Bush ahead by one point), NPR chief political correspondent and FOX News Channel political contributor Mara Liasson alluded to “other polls,” but Hume challenged her:

LIASSON: [I]f this [i.e., the data from the ABC/Washington Post and Pew polls] is an accurate description, then the debate did not have as big an impact on the race as other polls suggested.

[...]

HUME: Wait a minute. Hold it. Hold it. What other polls -- hold it -- you say “other polls.” What other polls?

Liasson mentioned the Newsweek poll, and Roll Call executive editor Morton M. Kondracke mentioned the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll. No one mentioned the CBS/New York Times poll, which showed a tie. That poll was released on October 4, though MMFA could not determine if had been released in advance of Special Report's airtime (6 p.m. ET).

After the commercial break, Weekly Standard executive editor Fred Barnes blamed the media for the Newsweek poll. Hume was supportive:

BARNES: I'm accusing Newsweek or the pollster of nothing. But the truth is that press corps was poised to declare the Kerry comeback and make this race more interesting. And those numbers certainly backed up the notion that there was a Kerry comeback. When I -- and it started almost immediately after the 90-minute debate. When I saw them, I tell you I was -- when you see a ten-point swing, from Bush being ahead by eight to Bush being behind by two.

HUME: It was more than that. It's more like 13. It was eleven. I think Bush [sic] down by eleven.

BARNES: Well, whatever. OK, eleven -- a 13-point swing. When you see that happening within 24 hours, or 36 hours after the debate, and you realize we have an electorate in which there were very few undecided to begin with, you think, something's fishy here.

In the end, the panel reached a consensus that Kerry's win in the debate was meaningless and, indeed, that his candidacy is doomed. Hume attributed to Liasson the claim that “the debate did not have that much effect,” even though it was Hume himself who had declared it nearly an hour earlier at the beginning of the show:

HUME: Well, the question I would have about this is, if this poll indicates, as you suggested earlier, that the debate did not have that much effect ...

LIASSON: It might not have. Yes.

HUME: ... it might not have had that much effect. If that's true -- and did we see, I think, a genuine shift in the race back in August and into this month from the two conventions carried --

[...]

So the question is, what might change the dynamics of this race yet? The rest of the debates? What?

LIASSON: Oh, the rest of the debates, external events, what happens on the ground in Iraq, economic numbers.

KONDRACKE: If these polls are right, then the public has essentially made up its mind that Bush is a strong leader, much stronger than Kerry is. And if they keep believing that terrorism in Iraq are the most important issues, I don't see how Kerry wins.

BARNES: They're more interested in a strong leader than a good debater.