Fox Mole fired: O’Reilly producer Joe Muto says it’s over
The media website Gawker published this image of O’Reilly Factor Associate Producer Joe Muto, who has been fired after being exposed as the so-called Fox Mole.
NEW YORK – Oh, well. That was fun while it lasted.
The so-called Fox Mole — the pseudonymous tattletale writing angry missives from within Fox News Channel — writes that his name is Joe Muto, an eight-year Fox veteran, and that he has been caught, exposed, fired and was escorted last night from the News Corporation headquarters on Sixth Avenue here, according to a post on Gawker.
More from GlobalPost: Gawker: Fox Mole says he or she has not been caught
“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,” Muto writes. “They nailed me.”
According to The Huffington Post, Fox issued a statement late Wednesday saying that the company was considering legal action against Muto and “possibly others.”
“Joe Muto has already been fired. Once the network determined that Mr Muto was the main culprit in less than 24 hours, he was suspended late yesterday while we pursued concurrent avenues. We are continuing to explore legal recourse against Mr Muto and possibly others,” the statement said.
Muto wrote last night that the company determined his login had been used to access videos that had been leaked.
“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 wrote.
“I denied it, which is why they didn't fire me outright. But two nice gentlemen from security escorted me to my desk to pack up my stuff, and it was pretty obvious at that point that I would not be setting foot back into 1211 Avenue of the Americas again.”
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A second Gawker post had ridiculed the poor state of the toilets in the men’s room at Fox News Channel, saying that the wealthy station had toilet stall dividers that afforded little privacy, even for VIP staff like presenter Bill O’Reilly.
A speculative article from ABC News indicates that a book deal could be in the works for Muto but that this would likely attract comparatively small monetary advances from publishers.
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