http://www.slate.com/id/2154078/entry/2154079/?nav=tap3As senior vice president, news editorial, for Fox News, John Moody oversees that cable news channel's story content and overall editorial direction. Fox News reporters and producers are accustomed to receiving daily editorial memos from Moody on what to expect or how to direct developing stories. More than anyone else except Fox News chairman and chief executive officer Roger Ailes, it is Moody who defines, for Fox News, what it means to be "fair and balanced."
Judging from Moody's Nov. 13 memo, reprinted below (a second memo appears on the following two pages), it is "fair and balanced" to gloat, prior to the vote to elect House leaders on Nov. 16, "The Pelosi effect is being felt. ... Let the blue bloodbath begin."
It is also "fair and balanced" for Moody to instruct the news staff to ask the following question of every guest who appears to discuss the pending immigration bill: "Does the U.S. have the right to defend its borders or not? ... Lets see if anyone says no."
Actual copies of Moody's memos....In this memo, issued the day after the Democratic House victory, Moody rules that fairness and balance require Fox News to "note throughout the day" that "the war on terror continues" by reporting again and again that Hamas has told the Associated Press, "
he people and the nation all over the globe are required to teach the American enemy tough lessons."
Fairness and balance also require Moody to reassure the Fox newsroom that "the elections and Rumsfeld's resignation," while certainly "a major event," were "not the end of the world," and to point out that "the Iraqi insurgents ... must be thrilled at the prospect of a Dem-controlled Congress."
Although Slate's copy of the memo ends here, a later draft posted independently by the Huffington Post has Moody going on to suggest that the Hamas statement mentioned on the previous page was a response to the Democratic victory: "We'll continue to work the Hamas threat to the U.S. that came hours after the election results. ... Just because the Dems won, the war on terror isn't over." Later that day on Live News, anchor Martha MacCallum aired a report in which she asked guest Christian Broadcasting Network terrorism expert Erick Stakelbeck about "reports of cheering in the streets on the behalf of the supporters of the insurgency in Iraq, that they're very pleased with the way things are going here and also with the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld."
That's fair and balanced, too.