Megyn Kelly

Megyn Kelly TIME 100
Jesse Dittmar—Redux

An authoritative force in cable news

Ten years ago, my wife Kim, then Fox News’ Washington bureau chief, walked into my office carrying a videocassette. “You have got to see this,” Kim said. It was the audition tape of a local TV reporter then named Megyn Kendall. She was a lawyer and new to the business, but her tape displayed as full a set of the qualities of a network correspondent as I had ever seen: great looks, strong voice, authoritative yet cheerful presence and obvious intelligence. In other words, limitless potential. But there was a problem: we had no openings, which was quickly pointed out to me when I enthused about her during a phone call with Fox News chair Roger Ailes and other executives. “Please,” I asked Roger, “just look at the tape.” I suspected he would see what I had seen. He did, and an opening was created. From the start, Megyn gave us insightful Supreme Court coverage, and she was among the first to spot flaws in the false rape charges against the Duke lacrosse players. She was too good to last as a mere correspondent, and she didn’t. The rest, as they say, is history.

Hume is a senior political analyst for Fox News Channel

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