Media Matters has obtained leaked emails that show how a top Washington editor at Fox News directed his journalists not to use the phrase "public option." Instead, Bill Sammon, Fox News' Washington
managing editor, told staffers to use the phrase "government option." This happens to be the exact phrase that Republican pollster Frank Luntz had advised Republicans to begin using to describe the
public option -- on Sean Hannity's show.
Speaking to Hannity in August 2009, Luntz said: "If you call it a 'public option,' the American people are split," but that "if you call it
the 'government option,' the public is overwhelmingly against it." Media Matters obtained an email that Sammon sent the day after Harry Reid introduced the health care bill in the Senate. The bill
included a public option. In Sammon's email, sent on Oct. 27, 2009, he reminds journalists not to use the term.
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