Bret Baier Profile…

The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz profiles Bret Baier…

Bret Baier, who took over Fox’s Washington newscast last night, dutifully declares that he will gradually put his own “stamp” on the program.

Yet in praising the decade-old show that Brit Hume built from scratch — with its heavy focus on politics and punditry — Baier doesn’t sound like a man with an agenda. “Why change the thing that has worked so well?” he asks.

The 38-year-old reporter alters one very important thing with his presence in the “Special Report” anchor chair. Hume was a proud conservative who saw himself as providing a balanced counterweight to the media’s liberal slant. Baier says he is an independent who does not bring an ideological approach to his work.

Still, he says, “this campaign has at times been an easy ride for the Obama team. If that were to continue, people would be disappointed. Fox doesn’t have to be in a mode of attack, but it has to be in a mode of covering stories that perhaps other news organizations are not going to do. . . . There’s an argument to be made that Fox could do even better in this environment.”