Fox News giving bigger role to ex-Bush aide Perino

NEW YORK » When Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg made the media rounds in advance of Mark Zuckerberg’s congressional testimony this week, it was a telling sign that Dana Perino was chosen to question her for Fox News Channel.

The assignment speaks to Perino’s growing role at Fox, and a sense that sources are trusting her as an honest broker of information. Perino, who hosts an afternoon news hour and is a panelist on “The Five,” is quietly persistent in a medium where bluster pays. She believes in homework at a time when “fake news” is used as an epithet.

She’s a Bush Republican in a Trump world.

“My nature,” said the former White House press secretary for President George W. Bush, “is to try to show people that we may actually agree on things more than we think.”

The Sandberg interview was only the third such interview Perino has done, and the one with the highest profile. The beginning was awkward, as Perino couldn’t dislodge Sandberg from talking points. But when the anchor observed that people are more tribal the more connected they’ve become, it opened a real discussion.

Only one question seemed designed specifically for a Fox audience, when Perino asked about concerns among conservatives that changed algorithms for sharing news would benefit liberals.

“There are a lot of people who are angry about Facebook,” she said in an interview. “But nobody has the same grievance. It was hard to kind of settle in on what to ask her about.”

For most of her career, Perino was at the other end of the questions. She grew up outside of Denver and worked as a press secretary on Capitol Hill in the late 1990s. Following the 2001 terrorist attacks, she went to work for the Bush administration and was his final press secretary, leaving the White House when Bush did in January 2009.

She searched for a second act, and found television the most satisfying. She was an original panelist on “The Five” when it started in 2011. Fox gave her more assignments — she was filling in for Bill O’Reilly when he was fired and it was left to her to tell his audience he wouldn’t be back — and earned a weekday show at 2 p.m. Eastern time last fall. Her show was called “The Daily Briefing” in part because that hour was often interrupted by the White House press briefing she once led.

While not as brash as Shepard Smith, who seems to delight in debunking theories pushed by Fox opinion hosts, Perino largely takes refuge in reporting.

During her time on “The Five,” Perino paid a summer visit to the Bush compound in Maine. She said the first time former first lady Barbara Bush spotted her, she said, “Ah, it’s the voice of reason” on the show.

“I’ll never get a T-shirt and wear that around,” Perino said. “But if people feel they can get that from me and get other things from other people, then that’s good. I’m reluctant to give my opinion, because I don’t want to sound judgmental or condescending.”