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Fox News Channel: Thugs posing as journalists

My policy on Fox News Channel has always been to defend their right to exist -- I think there's nothing inherently wrong with America having conservative or, um, liberal news outlets -- and to use my free speech to attack them when they get things wrong, which seems to be a lot. I had no idea until reading this NYT column by David Carr that they're also lowlife thugs who use an M.O. straight out of "the Sopranos":

Earlier this year, a colleague of mine said, he was writing a story about CNN's gains in the ratings and was told on deadline by a Fox News public relations executive that if he persisted, "they" would go after him. Within a day, "they" did, smearing him around the blogs, he said. (I did not ask him for a comment because the information was of a private nature.)
Some of the avenues of attack are easier to anticipate than others. Right now, there are advance copies circulating of a reported memoir I wrote about my times as a drug addict and drunk. I've already been called a "crack addict" on Bill O'Reilly's show, which at least has the virtue of being true, if a little vintage.

Read the whole thing -- there's other outrages -- and then spend the day talking between yourselves again.

It's an open thread. I'm off writing a book, and I...am...outtahere!