Oomph. The first three paragraphs in the lead story in the Sunday New York Times, a profile of Fox News Chief Roger Ailes, are about my biography of Rupert Murdoch, The Man Who Owns the News--but it would be hard to know that.
In the fall of 2008 an angry Ailes, the Times says, went to Murdoch because he was mad about a report that Murdoch was going to endorse Barack Obama for president and because "he had read a book excerpt in Vanity Fair" that said Murdoch was embarrassed by Fox News. (Actually, these were not separate issues, as the Times indicates, rather both facts came from the book excerpt.)
Anyway, that's it, "book excerpt in Vanity Fair." The article, by David Carr and Tim Arango, in a most peculiar bit of journalistic legerdemain, doesn't mention the book's title or me. That's what happens when you get on the wrong side of the Times, whose business troubles and mismanagement I've written lots about, and its reporters--I regularly make fun of Carr for being the newsroom's official teacher's pet. They disappear you.
During the meeting with Murdoch, "Mr. Ailes threatened to quit, a person familiar with the conversation said," according to the Times. That person was me. Tim Arango interviewed me for the piece and that's what I told him--happily told him and invited him to use my name. The Times turned a willing public source into a blind quote because it doesn't want to give the source credit.
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