PressEthic

The day after the election (8 November 2006), a Fox News Memo (which was later leaked to the Huffington Post) outlined the network's post-election spin plan. Written by Fox's Vice President of News, the memo urged reporters to "be on the lookout for any statements from the Iraqi insurgents, who must be thrilled at the prospect of a Dem-controlled congress."

This blatantly biased and underhanded strategy is hardly surprising or even news-worthy. Fox's biases are obvious to all but the most naive viewers.

But it is interesting to observe, as the CJR Daily's Paul McLeary noted, that Fox's Martha McCallum lost no time in carrying out this assignment.

As reported on News Hounds, on 9 November (the day after the memo made the rounds), McCallum appeared on Live Desk and claimed that "terrorists are dancing in the streets over Democratic congressional victories."

And the source for the information about these 'terrorist' dance parties? Ah, the old reliably vague attribution, "some reports."

What's more -- the segment inexplicably ended with some random, unattributed footage of people yelling "Bomb, Bomb, USA," taken from a documentary McLeary later was able to identify as Obsession: The Threat of Radical Islam.

Huh?

Clearly Fox is no paragon of reporting excellence or journalistic ethics. But since when is a news broadcast merely a montage of images and comments intended to create a completely false impression of reality?

Moreover, this display seems clearly intended to scare or otherwise influence Fox viewers, by conveying the misleading impression that a Democratic majority in congress somehow benefits anti-American groups. One can only hope that the very heavy-handedness of this technique renders it laughable to even the most orthodox Fox viewers.

That said, what's next for Fox? Will anti-Dem subliminal messages be flickering between Pelosi rants on Hannity & Colmes?