Fox News tells anchors not to call Biden ‘President-elect,’ then seems to change its tune

Fox News, the cable network that has been one of President Trump’s most important supporters, told anchors and other staffers not to call Joe Biden the “President-elect” when the network calls the race, according to two memos obtained by CNN Business. The memos said that Fox should “stay away” from using the description, and instead say something like Biden has “enough electoral votes to win the presidency.” The memos justified the unusual positioning by citing the moves by Trump’s legal teams to challenge the results. Numerous legal analysts, however, have dismissed the lawsuits and potential legal maneuverings as having little to no merit. “We will report both sides until there is further guidance,” one of the memos said. After CNN Business reported on the internal guidance, and noted that it was possible that Fox could change the guidance either before or after it calls the race, Fox denied that it was guidance at all, and anchors on Fox referred to Biden as “President-elect” in hypothetical conversations. One of the email messages told staffers that “we will not be calling Biden the president elect. Or using any of the whizbang graphics that say so.”