So Who is David Rhodes?

So I wondered, who's this David Rhodes guy who made Fox's first (and so far only) official response to being dumped as a debate host by the Nevada Democratic part?

Apparently his official title is not just "Vice President" but "Vice President for News" according to TVNewser, which went on to quote this cheery praise:

"I am tired of trying to think up new superlatives to describe David," John Moody wrote in a memo today. "Let me just say his keen mind, tireless efforts and strategic vision are not often seen in someone of his years. David now has the authority to make any news decisions in my absence (or, come to think of it, in my presence)."

Yeah, this John Moody.

("Leadership Directories" give his title as Director of News Gathering, New York News Staff, FOX News Channel.)

Here's an excerpt from Democracy Now! interview with British Lieutenant Commander Steve Tatham, the former head of the British Royal Navy's Media Operations in the Northern Arabian Gulf:

I recall speaking to David Rhodes, who was head of, I think, news gathering at FOX at a previous Al Jazeera conference, and I remember him saying to me, "Sure, we did go this particular way, but we only went that way because we felt the rest of the media was much too liberal and much too left-minded, so we took a more right-minded course."

Speaking of the Gulf, here's a Rhodes quote from an online article about the graphic coverage of Saddam Hussein's hanging:

"Everyone was anticipating we would have a difficult decision to make," said David Rhodes, Fox vice president of news. "But when you consider what we and everyone else saw coming in, the pictures were fairly dramatic, but there was nothing we had to do" before televising it, he said.

Networks took differing approaches to showing Saddam's body.

Fox ran side-by-side pictures of Saddam, one a file photo labeled "Alive" and the other a blurry still photo after the execution marked "Dead."

Finally, another quote, this one from Transnational Broadcasting Studies, "Covering Satellite Television in the Arab and Islamic Worlds":

Rhodes observed that all media have their biases--a position remarkably similar to one taken by an Al Jazeera spokesman during the invasion of Iraq, and recorded in the documentary Control Room. However, according to Rhodes, it was their journalistic responsibility to subdue those biases on a daily basis, a critically important afterthought which the Al Jazeera spokesman significantly did not make.