One of the claims made in today’s “Reliable Sources” interview with former Fox News associate producer Joe Muto is that he was “blackballed within the industry.”
“I tried to leave many, many times. I sent out dozens and dozens of resumes. CNN must have 20 resumes from me,” said Muto on his attempts to leave Fox News long before his firing Thursday for being the mole paid by Gawker to reveal inside information on Fox News.
Muto worked on one of Fox’s opinion shows, “The O’Reilly Factor,” not one of the news shows. This, he says, made him persona non grata at other networks.
“Hiring managers see Fox News on your resume and they say ‘this guy is conservative. This guy is a nut. We don’t want him in our organization.'”
Of course, many Fox News employees have left for bigger and better things including David Rhodes, now president of CBS News. Tim Gaughan was an assignment manager for years at Fox News before moving to Bloomberg and then to CBS News (the same trek Rhodes made.) Maral Usefi was a producer for six years on “Fox & Friends” and left for a senior producer job at CNN. And Rick DiBella spent 10 years at Fox News. He’s now EP of the CNN show Muto was on today. We’ve even seen a PR person from Fox News, Tanya Hayre, make the move to MSNBC.
It seems like being an AP on the #1 show on cable — an 8-year employee at that — would make you attractive to another channel. What do you think?