"The 10 Worst Media Disasters" has a byline from Brad Phillips, who has his own blog called Mr. Media Training and is not employed by Mediaite. Mr. Phillips submitted the article to Mediaite, who agreed to repurpose it on the site under Mr. Phillips' byline. Later that night, Mr. Phillips took to his own blog to attack Mediaite managing editor Colby Hall for not giving him proper attribution.

Mr. Phillips's round-up appears to be properly attributed on the site itself.  Mr. Phillips told The Observer he took issue with the fact that it twice said "Mediaite's 10 Worst Media Disasters" as opposed to "Mr. Media Training's," because there was no exclusivity agreement and the list was repurposed on other sites. The real issue is that Mr. Hall went on Shepard Smith's Fox News show to discuss the list a few hours after it had been posted. In the bit, Mr. Smith assumes that a Mediaite staffer wrote the post, and asks Mr. Hall to speak about how it was reported.

Since Mediaite published the content almost verbatim from Mr. Media Training, Mr. Hall was in no place to do so, but went along with Smith.

Shepard Smith: How did you pick these? 

Colby Hall: "Uhh, well, there was no shortage of choices. Turns out people said a lot of stupid things in the past year, and the confluence of cable TV and the Internet, we cover every base, so there was no shortage of choices, but we have a lot to choose from."

Video here.

Colby Hall was reluctant to speak on the record on the topic (which is itself slightly ironic, considering the on-the-record-but-off-the-cuff commentary of TV news is Mediaite's lifeblood) but told The Observer, carefully: "We at Mediaite do our best to give proper attribution and links wherever possible, we've felt comfortable with the way that we credited Brad with the story on the site."

On the topic of the Fox gaffe, Hall wrote on Mediaite (and reiterated in the comments of Mr. Media Training):

As the editor of the site I often speak on behalf of stories by a variety of our contributors. I was remiss in not citing Brad by name while doing the television spot, and had I the opportunity to do it again, I certainly would. Thanks for the media training, Mr. Media Training!

It raises an interesting question: how does the attribution contract between a content provider and an aggregator ("writer and editor" seems a stretch, here) change when the content changes platform and gets re-aggregated?

Although Phillips said the responses from other freelancers and content providers has been almost unanimously supportive, the commenters on his own site are somewhat ambivalent. They collectively agree it's an oversight on Hall's part, but several have trouble locating malice. TV is filmed live, bloggers are notoriously novice on camera, and most obvious, Mr. Phillips's single-author PR blog was much less likely to be found for for a last-minute live bit than the Dan Abrams-founded TV news blog Mediaite. One commenter suggested that Hall should have passed the call from Fox on to Mr. Media Training. 

Mr. Phillips told The Observer that the one thing that prevented he and Colby Hall from settling the matter privately was that "Mr. Hall continued to minimize this, saying this was a small mistake. I don't think that to leave viewers with an impression that a work is yours when it's not is a small mistake."

Shepard Smith has since made an on-air correction and shout out to Mr. Media Training, but also takes some blame for misreporting:

A couple of days ago, we had a segment that aired here on Studio B that listed the top ten media disasters of 2010. Our guest of that day was the Mediaite.com managing editor, Colby Hall. And as we reported, the media disaster list was published on the Mediaite website. What was not reported was that the original source of the content wasn't Mediaite. Frankly, because I didn't know that. That was courtesy of Mr. Media Training blog. So there we go. Cleared up.

 

@kstoeffel | kstoeffel@observer.com

Right up front in the article—a companion piece, of sorts, to the What I've Learned feature the magazine did with Mr. Smith in December 2008—we learn that Mr. Smith has "a face made for television, a face seemingly created not just for the cameras but by them, a brand-name face that could be made into a mask and worn on Halloween."

Citing Mr. Smith's bosses at the network—Roger Ailes, John Moody, and Sharri Berg—Mr. Junod asks, "Is it fair to say that another distinguishing characteristic of people like Ailes and Moody and Berg and, yes, Shep is that they can also keep a straight face when they insist that ideology has nothing to do with what is reported on news programs like Shep's 7:00 P.M. Fox Report?"

Mr. Smith certainly thinks so. He tells Mr. Junod:

Last year, The Observer's Felix Gillette spoke to Mr. Smith in Ailes Acolyte Shepard Smith's Super Bowl Sunday!

Fox News will continue its live hurricane coverage throughout the night until 5 a.m. with Gregg Jarrett, Julie Banderas, Todd Connor and Uma Pemmaraju anchoring the late night shift. Beginning at 5 a.m., Fox & Friends will take over the hurricane coverage live from the channel's makeshift St. Paul studio. 

Over at the Fox Business Network, Alexis Glick will be leading all day coverage of the hurricane from New Orleans.

In explaining the decision, C.U. wrote, “[Silver] needed to embrace and advance a broader agenda of reform issues that included a nonpartisan redistricting commission, greater transparency in, and public scrutiny of, the decisions that are made by the Assembly, and strengthening state legislative ethics rules in the areas of financial disclosure and conflicts of interest.”

Oddly, C.U.’s reason for not endorsing Paul Newell was electability.

“One of his challengers was a compelling candidate, Paul Newell, who had a good grasp of the issues, but had not been able to demonstrate that he had broad community support for his election,” the release says.

Maybe that's what Silver was was getting at when he said he didn't know who Newell is.

C.U. also announced it’s endorsement of former State Senator Pedro Espada of the Bronx, who is running against indicted State Senator Efrain Gonzalez.

In Brooklyn, C.U. chose incumbent State Senator Kevin Parker over either of his two challengers from the City Council, Kendall Stewart and Simcha Felder.

“I’ve met him a number of times,” said Mr. Smith. “He’s a private guy. He’s likes to stay to himself. Eli, as a friend, would be weird. I like him being my quarterback.”

It was Friday afternoon and Mr. Smith—the host of Fox News’ Studio B, anchor of the The Fox Report, and possibly the highest-paid on-air talent in cable news history—was giving NYTV a tour of his office. Ole Miss madness was the decorative theme. A Rebels welcome mat warmed the entrance. Commemorative Ole Miss coins sat alongside bowl-game souvenirs. A framed photograph of Mr. Smith and his younger brother, pregaming under the oak trees on the Ole Miss campus, hung on the wall.

Mr. Smith, who is 44 and has a head of spiky brown hair and blue-green eyes (a darker hue of what Katie Couric might call “husky blue”), sat back down on his office couch. Mr. Smith said he grew up in Holly Springs, Miss., idolizing Eli’s father, Archie Manning, who was a star quarterback for the Rebels during the late 60’s and early 70’s. “I’ve been thinking about Archie’s kids coming to Ole Miss since I was a baby,” said Mr. Smith. “Archie was on the wall next to Cheryl Tiegs.”

Mr. Smith explained that later this week he will fly to Glendale, Ariz., site of Super Bowl XLII, where he will interview Archie Manning about all things Eli. Afterward, Fox News’ executive producer of political programming Marty Ryan will splice the highlights into Super Sunday—an experimental football-and-politics spectacular that Mr. Smith will be hosting for Fox broadcast stations, around the country, on the morning of Eli’s big game.

The three-hour special, said Mr. Smith, will begin with politics and ease into football. Along the way, Chris Wallace will interview presidential candidates. Alexis Glick, of the Fox Business Network, will assess the state of Super Bowl ads. Fox station reporters will file dispatches from the campaign trail. And Mr. Smith will report from behind-the-scenes as members of Fox Sports prepare for kickoff.

“There’s technology being used now that has never been brought together before,” said Mr. Smith, who is an outspoken admirer of flashy news graphics and shooshy special effects. “I’m kind of a techno freak. So that’ll be fun.”

Even those at Fox who don’t necessarily know Eli Manning from a Waffle House booth jockey can still feel gung-ho about the upcoming News Corp. synergy.

Sharri Berg, the senior vice president of news operations for Fox television stations, said the collaborative programming grew out of previous teamwork between the Fox News Channel and the Fox-owned and -operated stations during the midterm elections of 2006. “We have a mechanism to share all of our live and taped content on a daily basis,” said Ms. Berg. “So we have the infrastructure. It was just a matter of getting all these people working together on one day.”

According to Ms. Berg, Fox News and the stations will split the responsibility for selling ads for Super Sunday—an arrangement that gives financial incentive to both parties.

Paul Rittenberg, the head of ad sales for Fox News, said the extravaganza has provided an opportunity for the stations, particularly in contested states, to sell even more political advertising on the eve of Super Tuesday. “To some extent, from the business point of view, that’s what drove this show,” said Mr. Rittenberg. “The most important goal for the affiliates and our own stations is to look for ways to maximize their political dollars.”

On a typical weekend, the programming following Fox News Sunday can vary wildly from Fox station to station, ranging from church sermons to rah-rah infomercials to syndicated sitcoms. The architects of Super Sunday hope the stars-and-stripes subject matter—politics! football!—will carry the morning viewers through lunch into the afternoon’s jocular pregame shows and all the way to the 6:30 p.m. kickoff.

“Given the fact that it’s the Giants in the Super Bowl,” said Lew Leone, head of Fox-5 WNYW in New York, “my hope is that the viewers turn the TV on to Channel 5 at 9 a.m. and don’t turn it off until they go to bed.”

Back in his office, Mr. Smith leaned forward on the couch. He said he felt lucky to get the assignment. “I’ve been here a long time,” said Mr. Smith, who joined Fox News at its inception, in 1996, after stints, among other places, at Fox’s WSVN in Miami and Fox’s “News Edge” distribution service. “Roger [Ailes] and I are tight. I want to perform for him in the way a kid wants to perform for his dad.” (Echoes of Eli!)

In November, Mr. Ailes rewarded Mr. Smith’s success (The Fox Report just finished its 76th consecutive month at top of the 7 p.m. cable news battle) with a multiyear contract extension, reportedly worth more than $7 million a year. The deal put Mr. Smith in the same financial territory as the network news anchors Charlie Gibson and Brian Williams.

For the time being, News Corp. doesn’t have a national nightly broadcast news show. But for events like Super Sunday—and, for that matter, the recent State of Union address and the upcoming Super Tuesday primaries—when the station group needs an anchor to coordinate a national news event, they’ll continue to tap Mr. Smith, in part, for his just-the-facts on-air demeanor and his bottom-up understanding of the local news divisions.

“He’s the first person you think of,” said the station group’s Ms. Berg. “He understands and appreciates local news divisions. There’s no news anchor I can think of who, off the top of his head, can call out a city, whether that station has a chopper, what their call letters are. His roots are steeped in local news.”

Before the interview wound to a close, Mr. Smith said he was looking forward to watching Eli vs. the Patriots. “I’m very excited about covering politics,” said Mr. Smith. “I’m very excited about being at the Super Bowl. But for me this is about Eli and Archie. I’ve been thinking about Eli Manning being in the Super Bowl all my life. I’m probably more excited about this than he is.”

Shepard Smith, of FOX News, will headline the production from Glendale, Ariz., the site of this year’s Super Bowl. FOX News anchor (and Cincinnati Bengals fanatic) Bill Hemmer will contribute from New York, along with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly.

As the anchors toggle back and forth between discussion of the Super Bowl and Super Tuesday, they will chew over political dispatches from FOX Broadcasting reporters from around the country.

More from today’s announcement:

This post, by the way, was for those of you looking for some hot media on media on media on media action....

Roger Ailes calls Mr. Smith his "go-to guy" whenever big news breaks. 

"It's got a wonderful feeling of openness and space. It's a true loft," Beverley Rouse, a vice president with the Corcoran Group, said of the apartment, though the exclusive broker declined to comment on the buyer's identity.

Mr. Smith declined to comment on his Greenwich Village purchase.

The apartment first hit the market in March with an asking price of $1.87 million, before Mr. Smith closed on the third-floor spread for the same price in May.

Mr. Smith, 40, has been with the News Corp. cable network for more than five years and helms two programs, the nightly Fox Report and the afternoon interview program Studio B with Shepard Smith .

A native of Holly Springs, Miss., Mr. Smith began his career in broadcast journalism at an NBC affiliate in Panama City, Fla., before landing at the syndicated tabloid show A Current Affair and, later, as an L.A.-based Fox News Edge correspondent, where he covered stories including the T.W.A. Flight 800 crash off Long Island, the Montana Freemen standoff and the 1996 Presidential campaign.

But it was on the set of The Fox Report in November 2002 that Mr. Smith became infamous among cable news watchers for his gaffe involving Jennifer Lopez. In a story about her hit song "Jenny From the Block" and the reaction it was getting from her childhood neighborhood in the Bronx, Mr. Smith was prompted to read that they were more likely to "give her a curb job than a block party."

But it turned out to be a real mouthful, and the hapless anchor instead read that J. Lo's neighbors were more likely to "give her a curb job than a blowjob."

At the time, Mr. Smith described the J. Lo incident to The Observer as "life's darkest moment." Now, with his new Greenwich Village loft and his recently being named the second-most-trusted news anchor in a TV Guide poll, Mr. Smith's career seems not to have stumbled in the least.

The regal East 64th Street townhouse belonging to the estate of the late businesswoman and philanthropist Lillian Berkman has just gone to contract. The 10,000-square-foot property at 22 East 64th Street carried a $19.5 million asking price before recently finding a buyer. Berkman died in May 2001 at 79, and the residence had been listing since 2003.

Fred Williams of Sotheby's International Realty had the exclusive listing and didn't return calls seeking comment.

The sale of the Berkman estate is just the latest sign that the demand for ultra-luxury properties continues apace. The six-floor mansion sits on perhaps the most prized block in all of Manhattan, between Fifth and Madison avenues. The block is home to some of the most opulent townhouses in the world, including Seagram heir Edgar Bronfman Jr.'s $40 million home, art dealer Guy Wildenstein's $35 million mansion and the residence of former Sony Music chief Tommy Mottola, which traded for nearly $20 million last year.

The Berkman estate offered a similarly luxurious pedigree. The 25-foot-wide townhouse was configured as a two-bedroom and was set up as a formal entertaining space, with 18th-century walls, an elevator and a private rear garden. The residence was also home to Berkman's extensive fine-art collection, including Italian Renaissance paintings and 18th- and 19th-century woodblock prints once owned by Frank Lloyd Wright.

Real-estate sources said the home felt more like a museum than a cozy living space.

"If a foundation or a club doesn't buy it, I couldn't imagine a human being wanting to live like that," said a broker who recently toured the space.

Berkman was a pioneering businesswoman who amassed a fortune as head of the company she founded, the American Tractor Corporation. She also became one of the first women to serve on the boards of major companies, including the Allied Stores Corporation and the Sterling National Bank. She exercised her love for the arts by serving as a fellow at the Morgan Library, the Frick Collection and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She also served as an advisory director of the Metropolitan Opera.

Now that the Berkman estate and Mr. Mottola's East 64th Street spreads have traded hands, Upper East Side real-estate watchers are wondering when the next batch of mansions will hit the still-buoyant luxury market. After languishing without a buyer in the post–Sept. 11 slump, Mr. Bronfman and Mr. Wildenstein pulled their townhouses off the shopping block. The Berkman sale may be just the encouragement needed for Messrs. Bronfman and Wildenstein to make another foray into the market.

P ALIGN="JUSTIFY"

On Nov. 4, Mr. Smith, the Fox News Channel's bombastic baby anchor, was in the final quarter of his rollicking 7 p.m. nightly newscast, The Fox Report with Shepard Smith , when he began reading a story about Jennifer Lopez's new song, "Jenny from the Block," a song that Mr. Smith reported was "about how she's still a neighborhood gal at heart."

"But folks from that street in New York, the Bronx section," Mr. Smith continued, "sound more likely to give her a curb job than a block party."

The thing was, Mr. Smith didn't say "block party."

He said "blow job."

He said: "But folks from that street in New York, the Bronx section, sound more likely to give her a curb job than a blow job."

He then tried to correct himself. "Or bl -block party."

Whoops.

"I was in shock," said Mr. Smith's producer, Jay Wallace.

"Seven years and he stumbled over one word," said Mr. Smith's boss, Fox News chairman Roger Ailes.

Mr. Ailes laughed. That, he said, "was a good one to stumble over."

Over the next week, plenty more people laughed. Mr. Smith's on-air gaffe became a mini media phenomenon, albeit a strange, slow-moving one. Because he said "blow job," it didn't really get a lot of play in daily newspapers. But Howard Stern ( surprise) went nuts with the audio clip, playing it repeatedly on his radio show. A video of Mr. Smith's flub began circulating wildly on the Internet, complete with the anchor's on-air apology a few seconds later: "Sorry about that slip-up there. I have no idea how that happened. But it won't happen again."

"It's become a bit of pop culture," Mr. Wallace said. "I have received that e-mail from 50 or 60 people."

But Mr. Smith wasn't getting much of a kick out of everyone else's enjoyment. The 38-year-old Mississippi-born anchor had spent nearly two decades of his life building a career, schlepping for local-news backwaters until he'd finally achieved some measure of legit triumph-like practically everything else on the network, The Fox Report 's ratings have exploded over the past couple of years-but with two monosyllabic words he felt it instantly slipping through his fingers.

"Life's darkest moment," Mr. Smith said.

It was a Friday evening, and Mr. Smith was relaxing with a Heineken and a Marlboro Light at the Four Seasons bar on East 57th. "It was life's darkest career moment."

Up until then, it had been going so well for Mr. Smith. He was one of Mr. Ailes' loyal legion of Fabulous Nobodies-seven years ago, he'd been rescued from the sinking set of A Current Affair and brought to the Little Cable Channel That Could. Fox was nothing then, a joke. Mr. Ailes, the former G.O.P. operative and CNBC chief, used to ramble into his newsroom and tell his troops that they were going to "revolutionize television news." Mr. Smith and his underpaid colleagues would roll their eyes, but the boss was just crazy enough to believe in it.

The boss was not wrong. Using a frantic cocktail of news and AM-radio-style conservative opinion under a savvy "Fair and Balanced" rubric, Fox grew and grew and turned itself into the greatest television story of the decade. It lapped MSNBC and left CNN in second place. Former network pariahs like Bill O'Reilly have become celebrities. Roger Ailes got bigger than Roger Daltrey. And Shepard Smith, a guy who started in Panama City, Fla., in 1987 for $7.50 an hour and was afraid to move to New York City, now gets bigger ratings than Larry King.

"That guy standing at the end of that hall, he was dead-on," Mr. Smith said of Mr. Ailes. "It wasn't a mindless pep talk. He really believed it. He was the only one. And he was right."

Mr. Smith had become a believer, too. This guy was from Holly Springs, Miss., and for years his "ultimate goal" was to be "a reporter in Nashville, Tenn., at WSNV and live in the suburbs with 1.5 cars and 2.5 children." He'd toiled in Panama City and Fort Myers and Orlando and then joined the controversial but highly successful blood-n-guts "Carnival of Carnage" at Miami's WSVN. After that he skipped to L.A., where an on-its-last-legs A Current Affair claimed to be undergoing an alleged newsier renovation. The show went off the air in six months.

"I was on the beach," Mr. Smith said.

Then Fox called. "You heard it so many times, that Rupert Murdoch wants to start a news channel-that rumor had been around since Fluff was a kitten," Mr. Smith said. "But then they acted like it might work, and I figured, 'O.K., maybe nobody is watching, but industry people are going to be watching, and if the news channel doesn't work and you do good work, you'll get a job somewhere.'"

He started covering the O.J. Simpson trial for Fox. Pretty soon he was in New York and tossed out on the road constantly; he spent so much time out of the city on assignment that when he came home to the Upper East Side, his doorman used to ask him for photo ID. He covered the Montana Freemen and Columbine and enough hurricanes to make Dan Rather drool.

Still, he was convinced that Fox was unhappy and wanted to fire him. He begged them to let him anchor a little, just like Albert Brooks did in Broadcast News . They let him, and he did better than Mr. Brooks' sweaty Aaron Altman. Mr. Smith found himself doing more anchoring. But he considered himself a reporter first, and he missed the Chase like crazy.

"I was jonesing to be at every big story," he said. Sitting behind a desk, he said, "was killing me."

He grew to like it, though. "I realized when a story breaks, it really breaks in the studio-it's about anchors sitting there ad-libbing until correspondents can get there," he said. Mr. Smith's stature grew as he assumed bigger roles in bigger stories-the wild 2000 election, 9/11. He was a media witness to Timothy McVeigh's execution.

As Mr. Smith became more comfortable as an anchor, his style developed. Though he also anchors a 3 to 4 p.m. newscast, The Fox Report with Shepard Smith is his prize baby. Mr. Smith presides over a high-octane mix of news video and correspondent reports like Vince McMahon at a Main Event. His jack-o'-lantern eyebrows arch and dip, his voice rises and falls with dramatic flair. He may be delivering news from Baghdad, but he might as well be introducing Superfly Snuka.

Aside from headlines, The Fox Report shares little in common with traditional evening newscasts. It's louder and faster-and especially during the "G Report," a blitz of softer entertainment and oddity news, it's Brokaw on Ecstasy. It handles the heavy news adeptly but harbors no illusions of delivering serious analysis; it's bright, shiny, instant-gratification information. This may have something to do with the fact that it's assembled by a young crew. The senior producer, Mr. Wallace, is 30 years old. The rest of the staff look like they've stepped off the set of Last Call with Carson Daly .

"I want it to seem like a train that's about to come off the rails, but doesn't come off the rails," Mr. Wallace said.

"We don't waste people's time," Mr. Smith said.

It is also something of an anomaly at Fox, in that the show is relatively apolitical. Mr. Smith said it was important for The Fox Report to hew to the "Fair and Balanced" mantra-and it's never going to be confused with the BBC-but he didn't want it to be thick with opinion. While Fox mouths like Mr. O'Reilly and Sean Hannity ride to fame and fortune, Mr. Smith said he was content to keep people guessing about his personal politics. He said he takes crap from the left and the right. He said he voted "sometimes."

Mr. Smith said his dream would be to produce an 11 p.m. half-hour national newscast similar to The Fox Report on Fox's broadcast network.

Mr. Hannity thinks Mr. Smith can "do whatever he wants to do." Mr. Ailes said he is happy with The Fox Report and Mr. Smith. He called Mr. Smith "one of the best newsmen" he'd ever seen.

"He is the epitome of the Fox News Channel talent," Mr. Ailes said. "He is sort of in the new generation of news people-he has got that kind of excitement and edge that I think makes a difference. He's exactly what we want at the Fox News Channel."

Not surprisingly, Mr. Smith expressed bushels of gratitude toward his fearless leader, who he claimed "pulls no punches." As an example, he mentioned Mr. Ailes' controversial dig last year at Paula Zahn, who the Fox chairman zinged when she acrimoniously left the network, saying he could have put a "dead raccoon" on the air and gotten similar ratings in her time slot.

"'Dead raccoon' was brilliant ," Mr. Smith said.

"I would step in front of a bus for Roger Ailes," Mr. Smith said. "He has changed my life. He did that to a nobody who came from a local station in Nowhereville. I'm not part of his big political power structure; I'm not one of his Washington favorites that he put in a big job. I am just some kid off the freakin' streets who he said, 'O.K., maybe he can do it.' Roger just gets it, and he requires you get it and trust him."

Fox News was about loyalty , Mr. Smith said. And in the wake of his own public flogging, Mr. Smith mounted a vigorous defense of Mr. Ailes, who was recently criticized for sending a post-9/11 strategy memo to President George W. Bush. In a Nov. 21 editorial, The New York Times wrote that "Mr. Ailes's action seems especially hypocritical for someone who has spent years trumpeting the fairness of Fox and the partisanship of just about everybody else in the news business."

Gripping his beer in the Four Seasons, Mr. Smith said the Times editorial made him "incensed."

"Who do you know who was thinking and acting in a politically correct sort of right business sense after 9/11?" Mr. Smith asked. " None of us were. We were expressing our feelings. Grown men were crying on the streets. And Roger Ailes sent a letter to the President of the United States hoping maybe he could help in some way. He didn't do that as someone who got Presidents elected. He did it as a father . And I know he did, because I know the man. And I thought it was pathetic and ridiculous that The New York Times did it on their Op-Ed page-that spoke volumes about The New York Times and spoke nothing about Roger Ailes."

Told of his young charge's comments, Mr. Ailes seemed pleased, but said he didn't want Mr. Smith to jump in front of a bus for him.

"Unless I was in front of the bus and he was saving me, and then I'd be very much in favor of it," he said. "There would probably be a bonus in it for him."

As for Mr. Smith's comments about his letter to President Bush, Mr. Ailes didn't want to get into the specifics, but said: "Somebody asked me if I felt bad about getting asked to resign by The New York Times , and I said, 'No, that was the high point of my professional career.'"

The Times editorial didn't actually call on Mr. Ailes to resign, but you get the idea. He wasn't exactly quaking in his loafers.

After all, Fox had succeeded on its own terms and now could exist almost as its own independent state (Goldfinger's lair comes to mind). Such a state provided good insulation amid flaps over questionable letters to the President and unfortunate uses of the phrase "blow job." Fox had already stood by Mr. Smith during a 2000 incident amid the Florida election chaos, in which he was arrested and charged with aggravated battery, for allegedly using his car to hit a female reporter who was trying to hold a parking space; the case was settled and the charge was dropped.

Still, Mr. Smith remained a bit tweaked out by the J. Lo mess. He explained how it happened.

It had been the day before Election Day; there was tons of news. Mr. Smith said that he was focused on the major events and never read any of the entertainment copy coming his way at the end of the hour.

"I read it cold," Mr. Smith said of the script. "I had not seen it before."

Then he said the two words heard 'round the world. His eyes, he said, tripped on the "job" in "curb job," and must have caught the b-l-o in "block."

Voila! Blow job.

"I felt the blood go to my toes," he said. "It was awful."

Mr. Smith apologized on the air, and in a minute the newscast was over. The first thing Mr. Smith did when he got off the air was to call Fox News senior vice president John Moody. Then he called his agent, who called another Fox News executive, Kevin McGee. The Fox brass was a little chagrined, but reassured him he wouldn't be canned.

"I looked at the tape, and I felt it was an honest stumble and we'd handle it," Mr. Ailes said. "I said, 'Look, if anyone raises hell about this, call me and I'll get in front of the bullet on this.' I think he did exactly what he should do: He apologized and kept moving."

Of course, by then the word was out about Mr. Smith's howler.

"Howard Stern was calling every day, radio stations all over the country and it's all over the Internet, and the publicity department's going, 'Would you go on Howard Stern?'" Mr. Smith said. "I'm like, 'No-where does that conversation lead?' I made an awful mistake. I would never go on Howard Stern and talk about what was, for me, a really awful thing. I had to call my mother and apologize to her. My mom is 72. I talked about a sex act on television totally by accident ."

And even though the humor extended to the Fox News newsroom, Mr. Wallace said Mr. Smith took it pretty hard. "I think he was definitely shaken up by it," he said.

The potential had always been there. By his own admission, Mr. Smith is not the world's greatest teleprompter reader. "I stumble all the time," he said. Mr. Wallace said the guys in the control room sometimes see the copy and make predictions on whether Mr. Smith will be able to wrap his tongue around particular passages. "We laugh about it," Mr. Wallace said. "He's a great sport about it."

Considering it's live television, and how much time Mr. Smith spends on air, Mr. Hannity said he thought the ridiculing went a little too far.

"I actually think it's been unfair," he said.

Then again, he did say blow job .

It will follow Mr. Smith for life. But it was nearly three weeks after it happened and the controversy was dying down, almost dead. He was a nobody who became a somebody, and though he wasn't likely to become a nobody again, he wouldn't mind a little less attention. Mr. Smith was happy to be on TV, happy to be on Fox, and beginning to smile again. Plus "my mom was not mad, as it turned out."

"I think people just sort of understood," Shepard Smith said. " Jennifer Lopez . It's not like she's unsexy."