Hume had worked at ABC long enough to realize how unethically broadcast journalism concentrated on advancing liberal and Democratic narratives, and how desperately an oasis of contrarian perspective was needed. Leaving ABC for Fox News was a courageous act. Hume was the one who most memorably repeated the Fox News “fair and balanced” mantra in the early years, a tongue-in-cheek description that drove progressives to distraction. Fox News itself was often unfair and definitely not balanced, but its existence restored a measure of fairness and balance to broadcast journalism as a whole.

During the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Fox News, led by Hume, was one of the few voices of ethical coherence (another was Chris Matthews before he sold his soul and integrity to MSNBC). “Special Report with Brit Hume” debuted in 1998 along with Monica and became the top-rated news show. He’s had several platforms and roles with Fox since leaving “Special Report” in 2008.

There’s a lot to dislike about Fox New and what it has become, and I suspect Brit would agree. The cheerleading for Trump has often been nauseating and unseemly. Pundits like Bill O’Reilly, Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity have been embarrassments. The network’s open religiosity is unprofessional; “Fox and Friends” is moronic, and the cynical sexualization of the female hosts and reporters—the “Fox Blondes”—while somewhat subdued now, still makes me wince. Suddenly having to cope with a rival that covered the stories they were trying to bury also had a deleterious effect on the Axis Media. ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and PBS became more biased and more partisan as they angled for eyeballs; MSNBC devolved into the Anti-Fox, rejecting integrity or objectivity completely. Fox News definitely was a catalyst (though not the only one) for the partisan polarization the U.S. is suffering through now with all of its attendant bad side effects.

Nevertheless, the public is still better served by having another viewpoint on current events rather than the sinister conformity when everyone was fed the same, left-leaning perspectives by “trusted” Democrats like Walter Cronkite, Mike Wallace, Dan Rather and the rest. True, there is no broadcast news source one can trust to be objective and non-partisan, but that was true before 1996 as well. We just didn’t realize it then.

America owes a debt of gratitude to Brit Hume for helping to expose the propaganda masquerading as news for what it was, and for giving conservative reporting an entry into the nation’s living rooms. Real non-partisan, unbiased and objective reporting would be better still, but that mission will have to be undertaken by others.