Fox News hackery reaches new depths

I know you probably believe your opinion of Fox News Channel can’t get much worse, but wait, it can.

Many of the major news websites — CNN.com, MSNBC.com, ABCNews.com, etc. — publish AP articles on their respective sites, under the AP’s byline. Fox News is no exception. The difference, however, as Media Matters discovered, is that Fox touches up the AP’s language to make sure it’s consistent with the words the Bush White House prefers.

Since April 2002, FOX News has consistently doctored Associated Press articles featured on the FOX News website concerning terrorist attacks in the Middle East to conform to Bush administration terminology. Without any editorial notation disclosing that words in the AP articles have been changed, FOX News replaces the terms “suicide bomber” and “suicide bombing” with “homicide bomber” and “homicide bombing” to describe attackers who kill themselves and others with explosives.

[…]

The Associated Press noted in April 2002 that FOX News first began using the term “homicide bombing” in its own reports immediately after Bush administration officials — such as then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer — adopted the term. While other news organizations continued to use the term “suicide bomber,” the AP reported, “Dennis Murray, executive producer of [FOX News’] daytime programming, said executives there had heard the phrase [“homicide bombing”] being used by administration officials in recent days and thought it was a good idea.”

This practice even led FNC to change an exact quote for ideological purposes. Last week, Hillary Clinton was quoted in an AP article referring to “suicide bombers” in Iraq “wreaking such hatred and violence while people pray.” Fox News didn’t like her choice of words, so it ran the exact same quote, but changed it to “homicide bombers.” (Later, FNC changed it back to what the senator actually said, but failed to alert readers to the correction.)

This is even more ridiculous than usual for Fox. It’s one thing to broadcast White House propaganda as news; it’s another to change AP wire copy for the purpose of Republican “message consistency.”

It’s the kind of thing a real news outlet with a sense of ethics and professionalism would never do. Yet, it’s all too typical for the hacks at Fox News.