We picked up a copy of NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik‘s “Murdoch’s World: The Last of the Old Media Empires” this week. In the book, which has gotten attention for its reporting on Fox News and News Corp, Folkenflik details his own interactions with the Fox News media relations department, including his previously-documented 15-month stint on the department’s “blacklist” (which Folkenflik says is internally referred to as “Irena’s doghouse”).
He also offers a detailed report on efforts to discredit a Crain’s New York reporter, Matthew Flamm, by planting a false tip that Bill O’Reilly would anchor the network’s election coverage in 2008. After Flamm ran with the story, Fox News SVP of media relations Irena Briganti told TVNewser: “Flamm is so far off the mark it’s embarrassing and his ‘reporting’ lacks any semblance of credibility.” Folkenflik reports that a former Fox News staffer confirmed the media relations department had been behind the whole thing.
(For more on this: The Washington Post‘s Erik Wemple has the emails between Flamm and the fake producer; Flamm offers his own account of the incident at Crain’s New York.)
“There are moments when the essence of Fox News can be discerned mostly clearly in the maneuvers of its public relations department, not on the airwaves,” Folkenflik writes in “Murdoch’s World.”
Folkenflik appeared on Chris Hayes’ show on MSNBC last night alongside one-time Fox News mole Joe Muto and The Guardian’s Ana Marie Cox, who weighed in on the Fox News details from “Murdoch’s World.” Watch: