Megyn Kelly’s ‘Dirty Little Secret’ About Election Coverage

By Chris Ariens 

Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly and her family were among the hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers (Alex and Merrill too) who lost power during Superstorm Sandy. So today, as things were getting back to normal at home, Kelly’s husband and son joined her in the studio during her show.

Kelly won’t be home much over the next 48 hours, however, as she is co-anchoring FNC election coverage tomorrow night. In the Miami Herald she shares “a dirty little secret” about the coverage.

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As part of her job, at least until the polls have closed, will be to pretend she knows a lot less about what voters are up to than she really does.

“One of the dirty little secrets of election night TV coverage is that when the anchors come on the air, they know more than they can say,” Kelly says. “We’ve seen some data from exit polls, we have some clues about which way the voting might be going, but under an agreement by all the networks, we don’t reveal it until the polls have closed. We all have to be very careful about disclosure.”

That’s just one of the tricks of the trade Kelly and her colleague Bret Baier will have to ply as they steer the Fox News ship into uncharted waters: a presidential election night without Brit Hume at the anchor desk. Hume, one of the first big names in broadcast news to sign with Fox News, anchored every presidential election from the network’s 1996 debut until his 2008 retirement. He’ll be around Tuesday, working as an analyst, but he’ll no longer the be the face of Fox News coverage.

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