Murdoch's World by David Folkenflik

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    Splitting the difference turned out to be a mistake. On the morning of February 29, Flamm’s story was posted online. He cited CNN’s good fortunes and said that a chastened Fox wanted to “spice up its coverage” and that Hume would be “relegated to a senior news analyst role.” Fox pounced. The industry website TVNewser was a widely read bulletin board for the industry. It had been started by New YorkTimes television reporter Brian Stelter as Cable Newser when he was just a college student at Towson University outside Baltimore, and remained a clearinghouse for industry information after he sold the site. Within a few hours of Flamm’s online article,TVNewser posted a punishing item. Brit Hume would anchor for Fox News, as always. O’Reilly never figured into the plan as an anchor.
    â€œThe notion that O’Reilly would ANCHOR election coverage of any kind is beyond absurd and wildly inaccurate,” Briganti told TVNewser in an email. “If Flamm is so off base with this ‘fact,’ you’d have to question all of his other ‘reporting’ when it comes to Fox News.”
    A second-tier site, Big Head DC, channeled Fox without quoting anyone at the network by name, reciting its financial and ratings successes. “In light of all this, we hear Flamm is being referred to as Matthew Flailing in some media circles today,” the site claimed. “The bigger question remains: how did such a woefully inaccurate story make it to print? Some insiders are even wondering whether Flamm will even have a job come Monday.”
    What the hell had happened? Flamm called the producer at Fox who had given him the errant tip. She was incredulous when he finally reached her. Who are you? she asked him coldly. I have no idea what you’re talking about . Panicked, the reporter sent an email to the Hotmail account from which he had received the original scoop. It bounced back. The account had been shut down. As Flamm and his editors conceded to associates, they should have treated the email as a tip rather than a confirmation. A former Fox News staffer knowledgeable about the incident confirmed to me they had been set up.
    To salt the wound, the posting at Big Head DC was accompanied by a photo-shopped picture of Flamm, with a bulbous nose, inflated ears, yellowed teeth, and enhanced rings under his eyes. The alterations were obvious when compared with the original photograph on TVNewser.
    Timothy Arango, then a media reporter on the business desk of the New York Times , told me he called Fox, more as a courtesy than to conduct a probing interview, as he prepared a story on CNN’s good fortunes. He received in reply an email containing the network’s internal ratings analyses designed to knock the story down. That’s a common response from many networks in such circumstances.
    As Arango pressed on, Briganti emailed an entire statement and said he could only use it if he printed it verbatim. “It was very vitriolic against CNN,” Arango told me. “I said, ‘I’m not running a full statement.’ Nobody has the right to make that demand.” He called her back to read the part of the statement that the Times would print. Arango had written from 2002 to 2006 for another News Corp property, the New York Post . He had developed warm relations with the parent company’s public affairs department and he believed he had a professional rapport with Fox.
    This time, he said, Briganti warned him: They’re going to go after you personally . On March 5, 2008,Arango’s story, headlined “Back in the Game,” ran on the front page of the Times business section, and it was featured prominently on the paper’s website. That morning, he received a call from a blogger with Jossip, a now-defunct gossip site. Arango knew what lay in store but did not return the call.
    Theunbylined story on Jossip said Arango had just returned from a