Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Fox News' PR War

There's a new book about Rupert Murdoch called "Murdoch's World" written by NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik. A few of the details are already emerging and Slate has highlighted them today. This little tidbit pretty much confirms what I suspected...

On the blogs, the fight was particularly fierce. Fox PR staffers were expected to counter not just negative and even neutral blog postings but the anti-Fox comments beneath them. One former staffer recalled using twenty different aliases to post pro-Fox rants. Another had one hundred. Several employees had to acquire a cell phone thumb drive to provide a wireless broadband connection that could not be traced back to a Fox News or News Corp account. Another used an AOL dial-up connection, even in the age of widespread broadband access, on the rationale it would be harder to pinpoint its origins. Old laptops were distributed for these cyber operations. Even blogs with minor followings were reviewed to ensure no claim went unchecked.

Nice. Helps explain some of the insane vitriol on media websites.