Lying Is OK If You Believe It

Media Matters had a big scoop yesterday. They obtained an audio tape of Fox News’s managing editor admitting to a crowd that he lied to Fox viewers about Barack Obama.

Speaking in 2009 onboard a pricey Mediterranean cruise sponsored by a right-wing college, Fox Washington managing editor Bill Sammon described his attempts the previous year to link Obama to “socialism” as “mischievous speculation.” Sammon, who is also a Fox News vice president, acknowledged that “privately” he had believed that the socialism allegation was “rather far-fetched.”

“Last year, candidate Barack Obama stood on a sidewalk in Toledo, Ohio, and first let it slip to Joe the Plumber that he wanted to quote, ‘spread the wealth around,’ ” said Sammon. “At that time, I have to admit, that I went on TV on Fox News and publicly engaged in what I guess was some rather mischievous speculation about whether Barack Obama really advocated socialism, a premise that privately I found rather far-fetched.”

Media Matters had previously published several memos from Sammon instructing Fox News to use Republican talking points. However, Fox News has still insisted that its news coverage was straight news coverage. In fact I saw Fox News’s Bret Baier defend Fox on Jon Stewart’s show just last week. Sammon defended himself in a rather unusual manner.

Howard Kurtz contacted Sammon for comment, and here’s how Sammon defended himself:

In an interview, Sammon says his reference to “mischevious speculation” was “my probably inartful way of saying, ‘Can you believe how far this thing has come?’” The socialism question indeed “struck me as a far-fetched idea” in 2008. “I considered it kind of a remarkable notion that we would even be having the conversation.”

He doesn’t regret repeatedly raising it on the air because, Sammon says, “it was a main point of discussion on all the channels, in all the media” — and by 2009 he was “astonished by how the needle had moved.”

That’s pretty remarkable. Sammon is conceding that the idea did indeed strike him as far fetched in 2008, even though he and his network aggressively promoted it day in and day out throughout the campaign. And he’s defending this by pointing out that the idea ended up gaining traction, as if this somehow justifies the original act of dishonesty!

Now, Sammon is also claiming here that Obama’s behavior in office ultimately persuaded him that the original diagnosis of Obama as a socialist turned out to be correct after all. That in itself, of course, is also a ridiculous falsehood. But that aside, the bottom line here is that he doesn’t regret having spread an idea he personally found far-fetched, because so doing helped ensure that the far-fetched idea ultimately gained widespread acceptance. That’s a peculiar attitude for a “news” executive, isn’t it?

NPR covered this story yesterday. Sammon defended himself by saying that subsequent events – the bank bailout and the auto bailout – meant that he was actually right. Of course he didn’t call them bailouts, he called it a government takeover of the banks and the auto industry. He should know, since he’s a member of the media, that those two programs were initiated by George W. Bush. Will we see speculation on whether Bush is a socialist?