In the fall of 2011, Roger Ailes told journalist Howard Kurtz that he was turning down the partisan heat at the network. Ailes didn’t say so, but he had already decided that, in the interest of a more moderate tone, he would have to get rid of Glenn Beck.

Beck came to Fox from CNN in 2009, and turned five o’clock—a perennially weak hour on the Fox schedule—into a bonanza. Beck contained multitudes—nerdy professor, slap-stick comic, born-again preacher, shock jock, weepy recovering addict, man of destiny—and they all fought for airtime with chaotic results. Some of his colleagues at Fox considered him insane. But it was hard to argue with success. Beck was the biggest thing on the air at five o’clock, and five leads into the six o’clock news and then into prime time. For a while, he was worth the aggravation.

Beck had a way of settling on odd subjects, such as the villainy of Woodrow Wilson, and riding them for days. He compared victims of a mass murder at a camp near Oslo, run by the Workers’ Youth League, to the Hitler Youth. He did a three-part series on George Soros, who, as a fourteen-year-old Jewish boy in occupied Hungary, had helped a Nazi seize Jewish property to protect his own life. Beck’s source was Mr. Soros himself, who told the story in a 60 Minutes interview with Steve Kroft, adding that he felt no guilt about it and that if he hadn’t done it, someone else would. The ADL’s Abe Foxman issued a statement denouncing Beck’s description as inappropriate and offensive. “For a political commentator or entertainer to have the audacity to say—inaccurately—that there’s a Jewish boy sending Jews to death camps, as part of a broader assault on Mr. Soros, that’s horrific.” There was jubilation on the left—not usually a Foxman fan club—for this condemnation, but Beck responded by displaying a letter he had only recently received from Foxman thanking him for being “a friend of the Jewish people and a friend of Israel.” Foxman subsequently explained that Beck was no anti-Semite, he was simply not aware of the nuances and sensitivities at play.

The following Holocaust Remembrance Day, a group of four hundred rabbis published an open letter in the Wall Street Journal asking its proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, to sanction Ailes and Beck for the use of the word “Nazi” and other Holocaust imagery. Ailes dismissed them as a bunch of political rabbis—a not unreasonable characterization of the organizers of the letter, the left-wing Jewish Funds for Justice.

“Roger’s politics are less crazy than everybody thinks they are,” says Rick Kaplan. “When something goes off, he deals with it. That’s why he replaced the five o’clock show.”

The final straw was the mass rally Beck staged at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. Beck was already despised by many blacks for speculating that Obama hated white people. Convening a mass gathering at the site of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech—and featuring King’s niece, the Reverend Alveda King, delivering a conservative “I have a dream” message of her own—was infuriating to many viewers. Ailes didn’t like it much, either. When Al Sharpton called him to complain, Sharpton was surprised to hear Ailes say he would “take care” of it.

Ailes’s method was patience and diplomacy. “To be fair, Glenn showed signs of wanting to leave,” he said. “He felt restricted here. Sometimes he seemed too busy to concentrate on the show. And his emulating Martin Luther King was over the top.”

Not only that: An advertising boycott organized by ColorOfChange.org hurt revenues, and Beck’s ratings declined after his march on Washington. Ailes spent months making him see that it would be in their mutual interest for him to leave Fox. “I could have done it in a harder way, but I didn’t want to give MoveOn and Media Matters the satisfaction,” he told me.

In April 2011, Beck announced he would be leaving Fox to start an Internet channel, Glenn Beck TV. As a face-saving move, it was announced that he would be cooperating with Fox to produce television and digital properties, although none have yet been undertaken. Ailes replaced the Glenn Beck show with The Five, whose ratings surprised everyone by approximating Beck’s, and left the five o’clock hour firmly in the hands of Fox News. At the same time, Ailes could plausibly say that he had moved Fox safely away from the fringe. As for Beck, Forbes magazine reported that in 2011, he earned $80 million—more than any other political celebrity and much more than he had earned at Fox. Ailes was right again: Everybody came out ahead.

Excerpted from Roger Ailes: Off Camera, published by Sentinel, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA). Copyright (c) Zev Chafets, 2013.

I, Roger.

Fox News chief Roger Ailes is trying to get that paper. Elsewhere in News Corp, two locals go all Benedict Arnold on a certain tablet newspaper and a certain tabloid newspaper. What's it like to get an employee evaluation at Reuters? How's that whole Media-and-Race thing going? All that and more in your Thursday Evening Media Briefs.

Roger, Dodger: Fox News chief Roger Ailes is renegotiating his contract according to Fox News' least-favorite journalist, New York contributor Gabriel Sherman (who's working on a book about the network). Some things you probably didn't know:

1. Ailes' personal lawyer appears as a Fox News contributor. Synergy, now!
2. If he were to leave Fox News, Ailes possibly wants to buy the Cleveland Indians, thus fulfilling his destiny as the real-life basis for the villainous owner in the next Major League movie.

And onto the numbers we go (emphasis ours):

One source familiar with the talks speculated that, given Fox's record profits, Ailes could ask for a mega deal, worth more than $30 million per year. But another source close to Ailes explained that, for Ailes, signing a new deal is not only about the money. Ailes has to figure out what he wants to do next. But money is surely a consideration: Ailes is a guy who likes to keep score. And at News Corp., he's the third-highest-paid executive, behind Rupert Murdoch and COO Chase Carey. This week, it was announced Ailes made $21.1 million last year. With Fox News on track to earn $1 billion in profit, it's certain Ailes would want the biggest contract of his life.

Sherman makes an excellent point that—in light of News Corp's restructuring in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal—Fox News is a more crucial piece of the Fox pie now more than ever. Know this: Whatever Ailes' deal ends up being, it's likely going to say far more about how Rupert Murdoch intends leaving this planet than what Roger Ailes has done on it. Sherman's wonderfully juicy report is worth clicking over for the read. Do it. [Daily Intel]

The Murdoch-to-Mort Refugee Trail: Capital New York reports that the thoroughfare of employment between News Corp and the New York Daily News remains trafficked, as always. This week, it's the copy chief at The Daily—Jon Blackwell —who's off to the Daily News as a deputy managing editor for production. Apparently, he was with News Corp for over ten years, much of which was spent on the copy desk at the New York Post. Meanwhile, Don Kaplan—on the Metro desk at the Post, and previously their TV writer—is also off to the Daily News as their new TV writer. [Capital New York]

Media Employment and Race: The More Things Change, Pt. XXVIII. The Atlantic's Ta -Nehisi Coates pens a wonderful thinker on the diversity problem in the media business, which yes, absolutely still exists (to wit: look around you). As he put it:

Magazines have long had a diversity problem, and that diversity problem is inscribed in their DNA. You can add on to this the fact that the traditional way of breaking into magazines involve ways utterly inaccessible to most black people. The unpaid internship was long seen as a right of passage. Very few Americans can afford such a luxury, and fewer still African-Americans can afford it.

What's It Like To Be Probed/Evaluated For Your Worth at Reuters? Just let this marinate for a moment:

One correspondent was told that he doesn’t use enough pronouns in his writing when they couldn’t find anything else wrong with him.

The only thing less dignified than being taken out back and Old Yeller-ed because you're old is having someone come up with soft euphemisms, and past that, boldfaced lies about why they're doing it. [Jim Romenesko]  

The Boys, On The Wrong Bus. Today, in amusing corrections:

An earlier version of this story suggested an earlier report had mentioned a bus tour, which it did not.

[Buzzfeed]

The Boys On The Bender: Resident MSNBC delicate flower Chris Hayes needs sleep. At midnight. [@chrislhayes]

License to Jill: New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson —the first woman in the paper's history to have the job—made some Vanity Fair power list, which is great, except somehow she dropped a ranking and is less important than Jay-Z and Beyonce (who the Times uses in their ads). This reporter remains mystified at the fact that Graydon Carter once had something to do with Spy and also wide-eyed at his reverence towards celebrities, which—we've been here long enough, we shouldn't be surprised—we're slightly ashamed of. [Vanity Fair]

WaPo Wha-Wha? If you can explain what's happening in this Washington Post filing—or at the Washington Post, period—in three sentences or less, The Observer will send you a pastry* of your choosing. [Washington Post]

[*Pastry subject to avaliblity.]

- - -

That's it for tonight. Give us your shady, your sketchy, your salacious media gossip. Or tips on making a paper crane army with very little effort. We're still after that one.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Launched in 2009, Newscore collected and redistributed the news stories from News Corp.’s reporters in the U.S., U.K. and Australia, while racing rivals AP and Reuters on breaking news. Newscore CEO John Moody, a former Fox News executive, was reportedly inspired by a moment of synergy between Fox News and The Australian in covering Heath Ledger’s death.

Designed to save costs on outside wire subscriptions and minimize duplicate reporting, Newscore content was at one time poised to be sold to outside news organizations, although one News Corp. insider said those talks fell through when the company’s public image suffered amid allegations of phone hacking at News of the World.

For News Corp. employees, Newscore was cherished as a wackier alternative to other wires, curating a web-friendly—and classically Murdoch—mix of the buzzy weird news, crime and animal stories well-suited to the company’s tabloid elements.

The layoffs are part of a wave of cost-cutting measures occurring as the media giant prepares to spin off its newspaper operations (like The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post) into a separate company, which will no longer be insulated by the success of properties like Fox News and BSkyB.

Last month, Dow Jones shut down the print version of SmartMoney magazine, eliminating 25 positions, and The New York Times reported that News Corp.’s Australian business was also being restructured, cutting hundreds of jobs.

One insider said that COO Chase Carey—who became Mr. Murdoch’s deputy as the News International scandal gutted News Corp’s executive ranks—had gone through the budget identifying money losers like SmartMoney and Newscore. A person with knowledge of the situation said the final call was made by Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, who decided that Fox News would “absorb” Newscore, bringing home Mr. Moody, who will now be an executive vice president and executive editor of FoxNews.com. In a statement to The Hollywood Reporter last month, Mr. Ailes said that Newscore would “strengthen [their] overall newsgathering capabilities.”

His remarks confused reporters and editors, whom insiders say were unceremoniously laid off. In an HR meeting, reporters were told that the “Newscore function is going to be absorbed, but not the staff,” which they understood as a reference to its proprietary aggregation software. Laid off employees were given the opportunity to interview for positions at Fox News and handful of others were enlisted short-term to write evergreen service features for FoxNews.com after the wire went dark June 29. Some have already been placed in new positions within the company.

In addition, there are internal rumors that The Daily has been put “on watch.” According to a source the status of the groundbreaking iPad tabloid—which loses $30 million a year—will be reassessed after the November 6 election.

The shutdown of Newscore predated News Corp.’s decision to split, but some insiders speculated that Newscore’s function would be diminished if it weren’t relaying news stories from television news properties to print ones.

In a publicity blitz following the announcement of the split—a move long recommended by Wall Street analysts and unanimously approved by News Corp.’s board of directors—Rupert Murdoch said the company will pursue more digital subscription-driven models, (a la the Times of London) and will no longer spill buckets of red ink. (Watch out, New York Post!) Mr. Murdoch will remain chairman of the to-be-named company and appoint a separate CEO.

"I spent almost eight years working in cable news before I decided earlier this year to exit the industry in  a quiet, dignified fashion, so naturally the show piqued my curiosity," he wrote. "Sorkin deserves credit for nailing a lot of the details of the milieu. But given how many of the little things he gets right, it’s surprising that he gets a few of the big ones so wrong.

One thing Mr. Sorkin gets right, according to Mr. Muto, is the "old guard news honcho," who likes to talk about how journalism worked "back-in-my-day." In the show, it's the bow-tied news division president, Charlie, played by Sam Waterston. At Fox News, that role is played by none other than president Roger Ailes.

"Fox News president Roger Ailes is known for regaling staff with stories about his TV past during speeches at company functions. I personally heard at least three retellings of the time he worked for The Mike Douglas Show and had to set up a functioning bowling alley in the studio with less than 24-hours notice."

According to Poynter, Mr. Muto is no longer working for Gawker, although the company will continue to support him legally in the criminal investigation over information he leaked to Gawker.

Ailes

Last week, Fox News chief Roger Ailes came under fire for characteristically incendiary remarks he made about The New York Times ("cesspool of bias," "a bunch lying scum")  and other media organizations during a lecture at Ohio University. 

The event was woefully underreported, but an unnamed "senior Fox executive" told Howard Kurtz that Mr. Ailes thought he had gone too far in the lecture. He respects Jill Abramson, the source said, and thinks the Times has been fair under her. At that lecture, he was speaking exclusively about Russ Buettner, who reported that Mr. Ailes had pressured Judith Regan to lie to federal investigators about her relationship with Bernie Kerik. 

The full transcript of Mr. Ailes's May 21 lecture at Ohio University is now online (via Romenesko), and it reveals plenty more original Times commentary. Mr. Ailes said former executive editor Bill Keller was fired for publishing biased news (it went down a little differently in the Ken Auletta version) and that Mr. Keller's stated opinion of Fox News amounts to sour grapes because the newspaper industry is dying and Fox is thriving. He also said that the two of them are getting a drink.

[UPDATE: That rendez-vous hasn't happened...yet. Mr. Keller told The Observer in an e-mail: "After my column identifying Fox as a satanist front, he sent me a light-hearted email. I offered to buy him a drink. He hasn't taken me up on it yet. Stay tuned."

Below, an excerpt of his conversation with moderator Andy Alexander.

AA ...Bill Keller who is a former executive editor of the New York Times had a piece recently which you obviously read. And basically, one of the things that Keller said was that partisan press in America is not new and we know that.

RA God knows he’s knows it. He got fired because he was putting the editorials on the front page as news, so ---

AA Actually I think he resigned.

RA That’s what we all say. More time with the family.

AA What do you ---

RA It usually means you got your butt fired; that’s what it means.

AA Okay. You’re not confusing him with his ---

RA I know Bill well. In fact, I e-mailed him afterward and I said, “Bill, your article…” what I find amazing if you read the article very carefully, he’s quite critical of the mainstream press for being too biased. And I said that commentary would never have been written if Fox News didn’t exist. We have made people aware that bias can work from a lot of different directions and God knows The New York Times is one of them. So the fact that he wrote that showed me the influence on Keller of Fox News. Now I wrote to him and I said, “You know, I actually think you’re more biased than you think I am, but I’ll buy you a drink.” He offered to buy me a drink and I’m going to call him next week and we’ll get together and talk.

AA For the benefit of the audience, can I just read one of the key things ---

RA Sure.

AA --- which I think is what you’re responding to. Keller wrote, “My complaint is that Fox pretends very hard to be something that it is not. And in the process contributes to the corrosive cynicism that has polarized our public discourse. I doubt that people at Fox News really believe their programming is fair and balanced. That’s just a slogan for suckers, but they probably are convinced that what they have created is the conservative counterweight to a media elite long marinated in liberal bias. They believe that they are doing exactly what other serious news organizations do; they just do it for an audience that has been left
out before Fox came along.” I wonder how much of that you really disagree with.

RA I disagree with it in the sense that we really believe when a Shep Smith does our hard news at night, you know, my suspicion is that Shep’s a Liberal, but he actually works at trying to put it over the plate and right down the center. So does Brett Baier. Does Sean Hannity? No. He announces—

AA Commentator.

RA --- he’s a commentator. So I disagree with that. What is amazing is that he’s finally admitting the New York is a cesspool of basically biased.

AA He—admitting that because my reading of that column was he was very clear in saying that we make our own mistakes and that we ---

RA But he’s writing his off as mistakes and we’re determined evil people. Let me tell you, let me give you an example. What if you got up on a Thursday morning and the front page of The New York Times said you were going to be indicted on Monday. How would you feel about that? Let’s assume you hadn’t done anything and don’t know anything about it. That happened to me. I got up on a Thursday morning and it said Roger will be indicted on Monday.

AA And what ---

RA And do you know what they used for their source? They said somebody was overheard in the waiting room of a Barbados airport saying it. That was their source for that story.

N.B.: As far as we can tell, the Times didn't say that Mr. Ailes would be indicted. That report came from blogger Barry Ritholtz.

AA Did you call them on it?

RA No.

AA Why not?

RA Because they’re a bunch of lying scum and they’re not going to do anything about it. They did it on purpose, they did it deliberately and they didn’t have anything. I’m sure they couldn’t produce the guy in the Barbados airport.

AA One of the things ---

RA So, do I take on The New York Times? Yes. Yes, I do, because somebody should.

AA Now speaking of the lying scum here, another line in Bill’s column was basically he says that Fox handles stories this way. Control it, spin it or his—meaning yours--segmented audience of believers and demonize anyone who sees things differently.

RA Fine. Give me an example. Let me hear what you’ve got as an example. That’s his opinion as a far-left wing editor, writer, reporter, journalist so called, and he has a right to that position. Don’t get me wrong. I mean, I think Bill’s a very talented guy; I’m told he’s a pretty nice guy, I intend to find out because I’ll sit with him and have a drink. I don’t have any problem with him having it, but you have to understand that is his view of Fox News, primarily because we’re winning. One of the things that is really, you know, we’ve moved into a society that thinks everybody ought to get a trophy. That’s not the way it works. Somebody’s going to win. And let me tell you when they win, when you win they don’t like you. Newspapers are dying, their profits are down, they had to go to a guy in Mexico to cough up enough cash to keep them running. They’re a far-left wing newspaper. They have an absolute right to be. And I don’t have any problem with that other than the fact that I have a right to present what I view to be an alternative point of view to The New York Times. So I don’t have a fight with Keller. I don’t even have a fight with left-wingers. But I do have a fight with people on the left who have a problem with Fox.

Mr. Muto, a former associate producer for Bill O’Reilly, was identified and fired by Fox brass less than two days after he began leaking unaired footage and office anecdotes to Gawker.com under the alias “The Fox Mole.” At the time, a Fox News spokesperson said the company was exploring its legal options.

True to their word, the New York County District Attorney’s office served Mr. Muto with a search warrant early last Wednesday, seizing his laptop, iPhone and notes on suspicion of grand larceny, petit larceny and computer tampering. The warrant, published on Gawker, cited complaints made by Fox vice president for legal Dianne Brandi regarding the Gawker posts, for which Mr. Muto reportedly earned $5,000.

Asked about the Gawker leak at a Hollywood Reporter party earlier this month, Fox chair Roger Ailes slammed the company’s business model.

“It’s a porno website,” Mr. Ailes told Off the Record.

(The odd dick pic notwithstanding, Gawker boss Nick Denton parted ways with  pornography vertical Fleshbot late last year, saying it no longer fit with Gawker’s portfolio.)

A handsome advance might help to offset any impending legal headache (especially since Mr. Muto claimed to have been “blackballed” by other news outlets for having worked for Fox), and the proposal promises plenty of Daily Kos catnip not yet published on Gawker.

Unlike MediaMatters.org’s straight-faced The Fox Effect and Gabriel Sherman’s forthcoming (and reportedly deeply reported) The Loudest Voice in the Room, Mr. Muto’s book is pitched as a How to Lose Friends and Alienate People-style industry memoir in a Dave Barry/David Sedaris tone. The proposal outlines chapters devoted to the “cheapness and stinginess” of Fox News (“cannot be overstated”), Mr. O’Reilly’s morning ritual (“lots of yelling”) and—“in what’s certain to be the most talked about chapter of the book”—the 2004 sexual harassment suit filed against Mr. O’Reilly.

“I’ll go through the lawsuit line by line, offering my own interpretation and commentary, and will definitively answer the question Did He Do It?,” Mr. Muto wrote.

Mr. Muto's agent, Anthony Mattero of Vigliano Associates, declined to comment. Vigliano has recently sold memoirs by Courtney Love and Tom Sizemore, not to mention Fox contributor Mike Gallagher’s 50 Things Liberals Love to Hate.

Speaking of, Mr. Muto’s proposal pointed out that the book will be a cinch to publicize, what with the “thriving cottage industry of people who love to hate Fox News.”

“Hell—certain masochistic conservatives might even buy it, just to get a glimpse inside the walls of what they consider to be a sacred institution,” Mr. Muto wrote.

Off the Record called Adam Bellow, executive editor of Broadside Books, the conservative imprint at Fox News sibling company HarperCollins, to see what he made of the pitch’s Right wing appeal. His assistant told us he hadn’t seen the proposal.

Naturally, Gawker published that legal threat (alongside an old picture of Bill O'Reilly with topless women, of course). Entertaining as it is, we've taken the liberty of annotating the best parts of Fox's legal letter to Gawker, right here:

1. Yeah, right. Adorable! But basically a sign that says—to Gawker, at least—"DON'T FORGET TO PUBLISH." These notices hold absolutely no legal bearing, and in the event the law firm would attempt to prove malice on the part of the publisher of said legal threat letter (Gawker), all Gawker has to prove is that the letter is newsworthy. If that. Judging by the six-digit counts on each of Gawker's Fox Mole posts, one could reasonably assert that this letter is, in fact, newsworthy.

2. Ronald M. Green, Litigious Legal Machine. If Ronald M. Green sounds familiar to followers of Fox's media troubles—or the troubles of Powerful Men in Media—he is! Green's page for the firm lists (boasts?) of his association to Bill O'Reilly as legal representation. What it doesn't note: Some of the cases Green has worked on for O'Reilly, including but not limited to the sexual harassment claim a producer filed against O'Reilly, which was settled out of court before the world got to hear the evidence in the case. He also represented Cablevision/MSG chairman James L. Dolan and The Garden in a wrongful termination lawsuit filed by former Knicks executive Anucha Browne Sanders after she claiming she had been sexually harassed. A jury found in her favor to the tune of $11.5M, $3M of which came out of Dolan's pockets. Also noted on Green's bio page from his firm? A position he wrote for The New York Law Journal entitled "The Employer's 'Sue First' Strategy: In high stakes litigation, 'preemptive strike' has produced results." If you thought Fox News was calling up My Cousin Vinny from the bullpen, think again: Green is their "Lights Out" guy, and he will no doubt take this thing to some inevitable conclusion. Don't place your bets yet, though: Handicapping odds is contingent upon on what further action he has planned, if any. Then we'll open the pool.

3. Covered Bases. The funny thing about legal threats is how many copies you end up getting. New York City's bike messengers owe the litigious lawyers of their fair city a debt of gratitude for giving them, like, half their business.

4 and 5. Scare Quotes. In legal paperwork, scare quotes are often used to precede the paraphrasing of a term throughout the rest of the brief; this isn't that. This is just a funny use of scare quotes.

6. 'Likely.' As in, "we haven't yet figured out exactly what about this is illegal, but it's surely something" or "probably, so you should be scared." Pretty standard.

7. 'Should.' As in, "this isn't actually a cease and desist, though we're going to vaguely allude to some sense of obligation, whether or not there's a law against it." Pretty standard.

8. Niceties. These are always enjoyable to read; they always act as amusingly macabre punctuation points, like someone telling you to watch your shirt for blood immediately after having stabbed you in the gut.

In other words, get out the popcorn: This has nowhere to go but up.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Per Deadline, Donald Sutherland has signed on to a comedy pilot at Fox set in the rollicking world of NPR. While it's purportedly a pilot focused on a father-son relationship, we're sure the setting will have some impact upon the plotlines, especially since Fox's corporate cousins at Fox News have had a few things to say about NPR recently!

• “They are, of course, Nazis. They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism. These guys don’t want any other point of view. They don’t even feel guilty using tax dollars to spout their propaganda. They are basically Air America with government funding to keep them alive," Fox News chief Roger Ailes on NPR, 11/17/2011
• "I am not yet convinced that the NPR national operation in Washington has been able to rid itself of the elite liberal orthodoxy that made me into their whipping boy." --Juan Williams, Fox News commentator, 10/25/2011
• "Why should conservatives’ taxes pay for this?," from FoxNews.com article "NPR Admits It's Packed With Liberals," 03/16/2011
• "This shake-up at the taxpayer-funded broadcaster should not be soon forgotten. It shows the degree to which off-base and twisted Tea Party opposition can be, and how high the fanaticism reaches," 03/11/2011
• "NPR Executive Goes on Bigoted Rant," post syndicated from the Daily Caller, 03/08/2011
• "[NPR] throw[s] out propaganda in violation of the First Amendment... Terrorists want to create terror. Well, what does NPR want to create? They're intimidating, too," Bill O'Reilly's on-air comments, 10/2010

We eagerly await the show, as we love to laugh!

I, Roger.

Fox CEO Roger Ailes is writing an autobiography, reports New York magazine's Gabe Sherman. Yay! It's a book that will certainly be an important contribution to the right-wing literary school known (around here at least) as Magical Republicanism. But Mr. Sherman is perhaps overly optimistic about what Mr. Ailes might reveal in his memoir:

Ailes's decision to write an autobiography could have serious implications for both Fox News and the future of the Republican party. For one, it would be difficult for Ailes to publish an unvarnished, tell-all autobiography while still running Fox News. How would the Fox talent or Rupert Murdoch feel if Ailes put into print what he really thinks about them? Ailes's only other published book, a self-help manual titled You Are the Message, was light on insider details, and came out in 1989, years before he launched Fox News.

It would be very surprising indeed if what Mr. Ailes plans to write is unvarnished or tell-all, especially if it's true (as Mr. Sherman reports) that Murdoch-owned HarperCollins will publish it. It's really too bad Judith Regan is not still in the book biz.

Update: We just got an e-mail with the following comment from a Fox News spokesperson: “There is one source with direct knowledge of Roger’s plans…and that’s Roger himself. Since Roger has never spoken to Gabe in his life, we continue to be fascinated with Gabe’s uncanny ability to read his mind.”

When asked if the News of the World phone hacking scandal might bleed into other parts of Rupert Murdoch’s empire, including its publishing wing, HarperCollins, he answered bluntly, “Yes, it will focus attention on all parts of the business, and people will perhaps turn on some lights in rooms that have been left dark previously and look more closely at what is profitable and what is not and what is proper behavior and what isn’t.”

He went on to hint that proper behavior was not always to be expected from HarperCollins: “They have been, and I’ve explained this to the heads of the company in London and New York, unusually shrill and punitive towards authors.”

Having issued his proclamation over the airwaves, Mr. Wylie resumed his usual, oraclelike silence, refusing to refer to specific instances of said shrillness or punishment (or to answer any questions from The Observer) and leaving New York publishing to venture any number of conjectures. A few days later, as if to confuse everyone further, Mr. Wylie issued a correction of sorts, telling the British industry publication The Bookseller that he “did not ‘call for an investigation’ into HarperCollins.” He went on: “In the context of current events, this misrepresentation of what I said is regrettable.” A spokeswoman from HarperCollins characterized this as “a retraction.”

At HarperCollins, at least, the prevailing mood was one of annoyance. “Mr. Wylie makes extravagant allegations to the BBC but fails to specify exactly what he is complaining about,” the company’s British spokesperson wrote in a statement republished in The Bookseller. The American spokeswoman offered only a “no comment.” Aside from a few high-profile moves—most notably Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, authors of the  mega-bestselling book Game Change, defecting to competitor Penguin Press for their follow-up­—Mr. Wylie has continued to do business with the company, prompting his commentary to be referred to as everything from an instance of “the pot calling the kettle black” to a “fishing expedition.” Among HarperCollins editors, there was an aggrieved feeling that he was “piling on” while unrelated businesses owned by News Corp. were down.

This is not to say that others in New York publishing were unwilling to take the opportunity to air grievances. “They’ve become draconian in their cancellation policies towards authors for manuscripts delivered even a week beyond their delivery date,” said one New York literary agent. (Unlike Mr. Wylie, none of the agents interviewed were so bold as to give their names and face future alienation from dealmaking with the formidable publisher.)

Other agents said that while such cancellations can feel unnecessarily, well, punitive, they are a publisher’s contractual right. But the company also recently redid its standard contract (known as a “boilerplate”) in a manner that several agents told The Observer was not “author-friendly.”

“They have changed their asking for a broader scope of rights than they have before,” wrote one agent in an email to The Observer. “Like multimedia rights; or not allowing authors to make a graphic novel of their own novel even if HC has already turned down that idea.”

“First, and most importantly, the rights grab is insulting,” wrote another agent. “I mean, HarperCollins will essentially be able to hold the book (and ALL THE RIGHTS that go with it) hostage for eternity.”

“We don’t comment on contractual issues,” said a HarperCollins spokeswoman.

Others were quick to point out how Mr. Murdoch’s tactics in The News of the World scandal recalled those of HarperCollins scandals past—­the payments to people whose phones had been hacked evoked comparisons to Mr. Murdoch’s attempted payments to Nicole Brown’s family in the face of controversy about O.J. Simpson’s memoir, If I Did It. (The Browns declined payments and went on The Today Show; HarperCollins was shamed into canceling the book.) The exertion of corporate influence in the hacking scandal recalled the allegations by Judith Regan, publisher of an eponymous HarperCollins imprint who was fired in 2006, that Fox News executive Roger Ailes asked her to lie to federal officials when her once-lover, former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, was being vetted for the Secretary of Homeland Security post (allegations that The New York Times verified earlier this year through court documents.) News Corp. paid Regan a $10.75 million settlement in the case.

Whether the recent News Corp. indiscretions will reignite interest in possible wrongdoing on this side of the Atlantic is unclear. Former federal prosecutor and Columbia law professor Daniel Richman suspected it may not, but added, “who knows what happens in this current feeding frenzy....It would be nice to think that all knowing lies made to those agents would be prosecuted.”

One small dose of justice was meted out this week to Mr. Murdoch, however. Back in 1998, Mr. Murdoch earned derision in Britain for canceling a memoir by Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, and was accused of doing so to protect his business interests in China. According to The Guardian, the editor of that book, Stuart Proffitt, has acquired an account of the hacking crisis for Penguin Press.

ewitt@observer.com