I’m usually leery of trusting explosive exposes from so-called and anonymous insiders, but there is a lot of truth in this story posted today on Media Matters by Eric Boehlert.

Money quote:

“Like any news channel there’s lot of room for non-news content. The content that wasn’t ‘news,’ they didn’t care what we did with as long as it was amusing or quirky or entertaining; as along as it brought in eyeballs. But anything—anything—that was a news story you had to understand what the spin should be on it. If it was a big enough story it was explained to you in the morning [editorial] meeting. If it wasn’t explained, it was up to you to know the conservative take on it. There’s a conservative take on every story no matter what it is. So you either get told what it is or you better intuitively know what it is.”

What if Fox News staffers aren’t instinctively conservative or don’t have an intuitive feeling for what the spin on a story should be? “My internal compass was to think like an intolerant meathead,” the source explains. “You could never error on the side of not being intolerant enough.”

Now some of the things said in this article may be exagerated, or even made up as well. The person quoted here clearly has an axe to grind, and I’ve been on the fence as to how much to rely on Media Matters as well. But to me, Fox “News” is as reliable as a comic book when it comes to news reporting, as are many other media outlets, and one doesn’t have to rely on Media Matters to point that out to you. I think any honest and discerning person, regardless of their political stripe, is capable of knowing charlatans when they see them, and the recent emails that have been leaked and posted on Media Matters (Charles posted one about climate change denial recently) do much to support what the person quoted in this article is saying.

Which is a long winded way of saying that I think it’s worth a read. ;)