Bill Sammon

Bill Sammon is Fox News Washington managing editor and a vice president for the network, as well as a published author and newspaper columnist. He previously worked as White House correspondent for the Washington Times and the Washington Examiner before joining Fox News in August 2008.

Personal life

A graduate of Saint Ignatius High School, in Cleveland, Ohio, and Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, Sammon lives in Maryland with his wife, Becky, and their five children: Brian, Brooke, Ben, Billy, and Blair. He stands 6 feet 7 inches tall and is reportedly nicknamed by some, including President George W. Bush, as "Big Stretch," or "Superstretch."

Career

He is the author of four New York Times bestsellers: At Any Cost: How Al Gore Tried to Steal the Election; Fighting Back: The War on Terrorism from Inside the White House; Misunderestimated: The President Battles Terrorism, Media Bias and the Bush Haters; and Strategery: How George W. Bush Is Defeating Terrorists, Outwitting Democrats, and Confounding the Mainstream Media. These books have been largely derided as overly favorable to President George W. Bush and his administration. Vanity Fair critic James Wolcott listed Strategery among a group of books on George W. Bush written by "faithful holdouts in Bush’s pep squad [who] are happy to have endowed him with superpowers" by writing "hagiography mash notes whose toothy gleam of triumphalism was almost blinding." Reporter David Weigel has sarcastically referred to these books as "scathing critiques of presidential power." The American Prospect wrote that Sammon "wrote an astonishing four books on the topic of Bush's super-awesomeness."

He is a frequent guest on FoxNews shows like Special Report with Brit Hume, Fox News Sunday, and Hannity & Colmes. On September 13, 2007, Sammon appeared on Special Report and argued that Theodore Olson should be confirmed as Attorney General.

On February 27, 2009, Sammon was promoted to vice president of Fox News and Washington managing editor, a position once held by Brit Hume.

Controversy

Obama Cairo Speech

According to Salon.com: "Right after Barack Obama finished his well-received 2009 speech in Cairo, Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon did a quick word search on the president’s prepared remarks. When he didn't specifically see the words 'terror' or 'terrorism' or 'terrorist,' Sammon decided that the president was soft of terror, and his interpretation was immediately repeated on Fox, over and over again, on the 'objective' news shows." Sammon sent the following e-mail to Fox News personnel:

— From: Sammon, Bill Sent: Thursday, June 04, 2009 9:23 AM To: 169 -SPECIAL REPORT; 069 -Politics; 036 -FOX.WHU; 030 -Root (FoxNews.Com); 050 -Senior Producers; 051 -Producers Cc: Clemente, Michael; Stack, John; Wallace, Jay Subject: FYI: My cursory check of Obama's 6,000-word speech to the Muslim world did not turn up the words "terror," "terrorist" or "terrorism"

In actuality, "Obama had mentioned 9/11, and al-Qaeda, and 'violent extremists who pose a grave threat to our security.'"

Public Option Language Use Memo

As Washington managing editor at Fox News Mr. Sammon wrote in a 27 October 2010 memo:

Subject: friendly reminder: let's not slip back into calling it the "public option" — 1) Please use the term “government-run health insurance” or, when brevity is a concern, “government option,” whenever possible. 2) When it is necessary to use the term “public option” (which is, after all, firmly ensconced in the nation’s lexicon), use the qualifier “so-called,” as in “the so-called public option.” 3) Here’s another way to phrase it: “The public option, which is the government-run plan.” 4) When newsmakers and sources use the term “public option” in our stories, there’s not a lot we can do about it, since quotes are of course sacrosanct.

Scripted Socialism Memo

Another leaked memo showed that Sammon gave orders for Fox to cast then-Senator Obama as a socialist. "Sammon repeatedly said Obama's remarks were 'tantamount to socialism,' on-air and in a FoxNews.com column, while also sending around a memo noting 'Obama's references to socialism, liberalism, Marxism and Marxists' in Dreams From My Father." Some questions asked by Fox journalists, including one from Steve Doocy (“Isn’t that what they do in socialist countries?”), were scripted by Sammon in the memo. Sammon later explained the incident as a product of his "rather mischievous speculation about whether Barack Obama really advocated socialism, a premise that privately I found rather far-fetched."

See Also

• Media bias
• Journalistic integrity

External links

• Biography at Fox News
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Bill Sammon on Charlie Rose
• Bill Sammon at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by or about Bill Sammon in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Profile at SourceWatch
• Bill Sammon at the Notable Names Database
• Audio interview with Bill Sammon, radioblogger.com
• Critical review of Sammon's reporting, Rolling Stone magazine