Joe Muto Fox News Mole: His Biggest Allegations About The News Giant
Swiftly and without much hullabaloo, Fox News exterminated The Fox Mole, a Fox News employee who had been feeding anonymous information to Gawker from inside the organization, in less than 24 hours.
On Monday, at around 3 p.m. he published his first article. By Tuesday just before 9 p.m., The Fox Mole was fired and he revealed his true identity on Gawker. Despite the fact that the extermination of Joe Muto took almost no time at all, the former Fox News employee was able to air some of his grievances.
Hi. My name is Joe Muto. I was the Fox Mole, Muto wrote on Gawker on Tuesday evening. Two hours ago I was called into a meeting with Dianne Brandi, the Fox News Executive Vice President of Legal and Business Affairs and suspended indefinitely... with pay, oddly enough.
They nailed me.
In the end, it was the digital trail that gave me away. They knew that someone, using my computer login, had accessed the sources for two videos that ended up on Gawker over the past few weeks. They couldn't prove it entirely, but I was pretty much the only suspect, he revealed.
Joe Muto joined the Fox News Channel in July 2005 as a production assistant. In January 2007, he joined The O'Reilly Factor as an associate producer.
The higher-ups at Fox News did not seem too perturbed on Wednesday night at The Hollywood Reporter's 35 Most Powerful People in Media event in New York City. Fox News Channel chief Roger Ailes blasted Gawker, a website that has been critical of Fox News.
What is Gawker? Is that that pornographic website? he asked. I don't care if they have a mole because we're not doing anything wrong, so it doesn't matter... they hate me because I make money and I do it legitimately and they don't like my politics, and that's America.
Although he has been fired, Joe Muto insists that he has a lot left to say about his time at Fox News and will continue to make those exposé.
I am a weasel, a traitor, a sell-out and every bad word you can throw at me... but as of today, I am free, and I am ready to tell my story, which I wasn't able to fully do for the previous 36 hours, he said, adding, Stay tuned for much, much more tomorrow.
Joe Muto has already revealed some defamatory information. Here are some of the most interesting snippets from his Gawker column (click here, here and here to read the full columns):
- I always intended to keep my mouth shut. The plan was simple: get hired, keep my head down and my views to myself, work for a few months, build my resume, then eventually hop to a new job that didn't make me cringe every morning when I looked in the mirror... The ten resumes a month I was sending out dwindled into five, then two, then one, then zero. No one wants me. I'm blacklisted. I work at Fox News Channel.
- The moment that ended it for him: The post [entitled 'Obama's Hip Hop BBQ Didn't Create Jobs') neatly summed up everything that had been troubling me about my employer: Non sequitur, ad hominem attacks on the president; gleeful race baiting; a willful disregard for facts; and so on. It came close on the heels of theCommon controversy, which exhibited a lot of the same ugly traits. (See also:terrorist fist jabs; Fox & Friendsmadrassa accusations; etc.)
- 'So why not just leave Fox News?' you might ask. Good question! I've asked myself that same thing many times. And I am leaving. Sooner rather than later, I'm guessing. But I can't just leave quietly, can I? Where's the fun in that? So I'm John McClane-ing this shit. I'm inside the building, crawling through the air vents, gathering intel, and passing it along to Carl Winslow.
- The basement newsroom is dreary, with no windows, fluorescent lighting, and constant worrying about an infestation from bedbugs, mice or some other vermin. Nobody really has a lunch break, so we bolt down our food at our desks like convicts and toss our sandwich wrappers and salad bowls into the wastepaper baskets under our desks, creating a tasty daily buffet for insects.
- The place is oddly low-rent. The computers are all at least 6 or 7 years old, and can barely run more than two software programs at a time. Everyone has a TV at their desk with a cable hookup, but the signal is bad and constantly cuts out and has static on half the channels. Half the printers are usually out of commission, and god help you if you have to find a working fax machine.
- The lobby isn't too shabby. It's mostly bland and marble, with the usual pieces of inoffensive corporate art. Not so usual, however, are the 25-foot-tall murals featuring a rotating cast of on-air personalities. Up until a couple months ago it was Fox News prime time people plastered up there. Currently it's Fox Business personalities, the grim swollen visages of Neil Cavuto and Lou Dobbs grinning at you, North Korea-style, insisting that all is well at the ratings-challenged business network.
- Sean Hannity's interviews are a source of embarrassment for many of us at the network... The ongoing right-wing obsession with Obama's teleprompter remains a mystery to me. He doesn't use one any more often than any of his predecessors, or any more often than the men who want to replace him. Yet it's always har har har he has to write down his words before he says them and so on.Yet Hannity advises Romney to use one lest his enemies find an error to exploit.
- To me, that's the most offensive thing about him [Sean Hannity]. He practices the laziest form partisan journalism - if Obama does it, it must be bad. Case in point - early in Pres. Obama's term, he went to a burger place with the media in tow. The outing elicited the sort of embarrassing-in-retrospect media fawning that was typical of the early Obama presidency, but it wasn't anything out of the ordinary for a president still in his honeymoon phase.
- Seizing on Obama's choice of Dijon mustard on his burger, Hannity sneered: 'I hope you enjoyed that fancy burger Mr. President.' That clip still enrages me, almost 3 years later.
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