FAIR AND BALANCED QUOTES. Josh Marshall catches Fox News' Carl Cameron making up quotes and sticking them in John Kerry's mouth. The story disappeared from the Fox website without comment until Marshall got on the case and embarrassed them into posting a retraction. Cameron had Kerry, at a post-debate rally, referring to himself as a "metrosexual" and saying something about his "cuticles." Marshall's got all the details here.

Cameron is supposedly one of Fox's straight-news reporters. His lapse doesn't tell us anything we don't already know. But still.

COSMO'S WORLD. Boston Herald business editor Cosmo Macero has a good column today (sub. req.) on Boston Globe publisher Richard Gilman's being named to the Red Sox executive board. Macero's barking in the right forest, if not necessarily up the right tree: the real conflict of interest, as he points out, is that the New York Times Company, which owns the Globe [corrected], also controls a sizeable ownership chunk of the Red Sox. Given that, the fact that Gilman is replacing retiring Times Company chief executive Russell Lewis on the board isn't that big a deal.

Macero's most salient point about the Globe: "The paper's biggest mistake has been a rather bold habit of avoiding disclosure when it editorializes on Red Sox business matters: annexing Yawkey Way; creating a 'scalp-free' zone, etc." I'm not sure if I'd call it avoidance. Sometimes it discloses, sometimes it doesn't. The point is that it should always disclose, and Macero's absolutely right about that.

Macero also announced today that he's hired former Boston-magazine executive editor John Strahinich. According to the announcement, Strahinich will "serve in a specialty role as our sole general assignment reporter - backstopping us where necessary on several beats, handling the flow of excess assignments on any given day, and, most important, developing enterprise pieces on a wide range of topics."

Strahinich is an impressive hire, and the move shows that Macero is going to be aggressive about changing the business section.