Fox News executives tell the network's journalists to call it 'government-run health insurance.' | REUTERS Fox News: Avoid 'public option'

Fox News executives told the network's journalists to avoid referring to the "public option" when discussing Democrats' proposals for a government-run health insurance plan, according to internal e-mails released Thursday.

"[F]riendly reminder: let's not slip back into calling it the 'public option,'" said Bill Sammon, vice president and Washington managing editor, in an October 2009 message to the staffs of Fox News Sunday, "Special Report" and FoxNews.com.


Instead, Sammon offered several other ways to discuss the idea: "government-run health insurance," "government option," "the public option, which is the government-run plan" and "the so-called public option."

Twenty minutes after Sammon sent his note, Michael Clemente, the network's senior vice president for news, said that "No. 3 on your list is the preferred way to say it, write it, use it.” He appears to be referring to "the public option, which is the government-run plan."

The liberal group Media Matters released the e-mails Thursday. Sammon's message, the group said, "gives credence to allegations that news from Fox's Washington bureau is being deliberately distorted to benefit conservatives and the Republican Party."

Sammon defended his recommendations in an interview with the Daily Beast. The "public option," he said, "is a vague, bland, undescriptive phrase" and one unlikely to stir up tensions. "Government-run plan" is "a more neutral term."

Sammon said he didn't encourage its use because it was preferred by Republicans. "I have no idea what the Republicans were pushing or not," he said. "It's simply an accurate, fair, objective term.

Fox News did not respond immediately to POLITICO's requests for comment.

Two months before Sammon and Clemente laid out his preferred terminology for the health care debate, Republican pollster Frank Luntz in an on-air interview urged Fox News host Sean Hannity to steer clear of discussing the "public option."

"If you call it a 'public option,' the American people are split," Luntz said in the conversation, which Media Matters cited in releasing the e-mails. "If you call it the 'government option,' the public is overwhelmingly against it."