The NPR reporter who previously revealed that Fox News paid employees to create dummy accounts and troll comment sections has now revealed that Fox News is also in the business of leaking misinformation for the expressed purpose of discrediting reports they don’t like.
A source inside Fox leaked the news that Bill O’Reilly would soon be anchoring election coverage, but that turned out to be misinformation that was leaked to discredit everything else the reporter had to say about Fox News.
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.
I believe there will come a day when Fox News will face the same kind of scrutiny here at home as Rupert Murdoch’s tabloids did in the UK, but we aren’t there yet.