Word: cousin
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Tuesday, Fox news chairman Roger Ailes, whose résumé includes stints as former president Bush's campaign strategist, was struggling to defend his decision to hire George W. Bush's first cousin to run Fox's election night decision desk. The network, which is part of Rupert Murdoch's international media conglomerate, proudly presents itself as an alternative to "mainstream" news outlets - thinly veiled conservative code for "liberal media...
...Tuesday, Fox news chairman Roger Ailes, whose résumé includes stints as former president Bush's campaign strategist, was struggling to defend his decision to hire George W. Bush's first cousin to run Fox's election night decision desk. The network, which is part of Rupert Murdoch's international media conglomerate, proudly presents itself as an alternative to "mainstream" news outlets - thinly veiled conservative code for "liberal media...
...there is more. When Ellis declared Florida for his cousin, he wasn't just following ABC, CBS and the rest. His call was the first, and appeared to precipitate a television-wide announcement: Bush had won the election. Not that Fox anchor Brit Hume was totally confident as he projected a Bush presidency at around 2:20 a.m. "I must tell you, everybody, after all this, all night long, we put Bush at 271, Gore at 243. I feel a little bit apprehensive about the whole thing. I have no reason to doubt our decision desk, but there...
...been a landslide, you don't have a candidate's relative reporting on an election." Interestingly, according to Tuesday's Washington Post, Ellis himself seemed to agree just last year, when he resigned from his position as a political reporter at the Boston Globe. "I am loyal to my cousin.... I put that loyalty ahead of my loyalty to anyone else outside my immediate family. That being the case, it is not possible for me to continue writing columns about the 2000 presidential campaign...
...graceful admission raises an obvious question: If Ellis, who has worked as a political journalist for the better part of 25 years, understood the ethical dilemma inherent in a candidate's family member writing an opinion column, how could he not grasp the colossal unseemliness in a candidate's cousin declaring a winner in a national election? And how could Fox permit such a blatant conflict of interest, even if, as it says, it didn't know of Ellis's contact with his cousins on election night...