I ask because Fox News' Senior Vice President of News Michael Clemente has claimed he told his staff on July 19 to be careful about the just-launched Shirley Sherrod attack; that the full story needed to be confirmed before Fox News touched it. Plus, Fox News needed a comment from Sherrod.

And now in an interview with Politico, Clemente seems to brag about how right away he smelled something wrong with the Sherrod story [emphasis added]:

But more broadly, Clemente said he has been around the block enough times to recognize the telltale signs of a fishy story, which was why he issued the note of caution to his staff.

“I've been doing this since 1978, when I started at ABC, so I've seen what has happened,” he said. “Mistakes were made. After a few years, you start to get a bit of a gut feeling about was this a portion of a story, or is this the whole story?”

Got that? As a news pro, Clemente could just tell --he knew in his gut-- that there was something not quite right about the Sherrod story. Except of course, on the day of July 19, that didn't stop Fox Nation from pushing the story online before getting confirmation regarding the context of the clip or a comment from Sherrod.

It didn't stop Foxnews.com from pushing the story before getting context confirmation or comment.

It didn't stop The O'Reilly Factor from pushing the story before getting context confirmation or comment.

It didn't stop Hannity from pushing the story before getting context confirmation or comment.

And it didn't stop On The Record from pushing the story before getting context confirmation or comment.

But yeah, other than that, on July 19, folks at Fox News definitely seemed to take Clemente's go-slow advice very, very seriously.