On President George W. Bush's second Inauguration Day, FOX News managing editor and chief Washington correspondent Brit Hume announced that FOX News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes had promoted Carl Cameron from chief political correspondent to chief White House correspondent and Jim Angle from senior White House correspondent to chief Washington correspondent. Media Matters for America has documented numerous instances of inaccurate, incomplete, and distorted reporting by both Cameron and Angle. For example:
Carl Cameron has:
- fabricated statements from Senator John Kerry during the 2004 presidential race as part of a "parody" of the Democratic candidate; he included them in an October 1 "Trail Tales" report on the FOX News website. The article was removed soon afterwards, but an archived version is available here;
- reported that Democrats favor a "stonewall strategy" on Social Security and applied various inaccurate labels to the candidates vying for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairmanship;
- inaccurately reported that Bush never said "mission accomplished";
- falsely claimed that in a September 20, 2004, speech, Kerry referred to Bush as a "warmonger who wants a perpetual state of war around the world"; and
- misstated facts about Democratic campaign rallies.
Jim Angle has:
- repeated Republican spin that Social Security is "heading for an iceberg ... unless significant reforms are undertaken," while failing to note that Democrats and many independent economists say that Social Security is not in fact in crisis;
- repeated a Washington Times misquote of Kerry, alleging he had supported a pre-emptive war with Iraq in 1997;
- echoed White House comments on the release of Bush's military records; and
- presented a misleading explanation of an August 2004 Congressional Budget Office report in an attempt to blunt criticism of Bush's tax cuts.
&mdash S.S.M.
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