Fox News 'Mole' Resurfaces With Book

[hue]

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=188293279

NEW YORK (AP) — Joe Muto has dealt with losing his job, losing his reputation and losing friends. The low point for the former Fox News Channel "mole" came three weeks ago, when he needed to be escorted from a holding cell in handcuffs to use the bathroom.

The ex-producer at Fox is still dealing with his spectacular flameout of April 2012. Muto, who worked on Bill O'Reilly's prime-time show, began writing an anonymous column for the Gawker website about what it was like for a liberal to work at Fox. His bosses blew his cover and fired him within 24 hours.

Muto did get a book deal out of the experience, though, and "An Atheist in the Foxhole" (Dutton) is being released Tuesday.

He also got a criminal record. In an agreement with the Manhattan district attorney, Muto pleaded guilty May 9 to two misdemeanors — attempted unlawful duplication of computer material and attempted criminal possession of computer material. He had copied two Fox outtakes to prove to Gawker that he worked there, and the website posted them. One showed Newt Gingrich's wife primping her husband's hair before an interview. Sean Hannity and Mitt Romney chatted about horses in the other.

The videos were what enabled Fox to identify Muto as the mole; their investigators found that someone with his computer sign-on was the only one to look at them recently in the network's archive.

[navarth]

1. Good luck, Joe

you performed an important public service and now you're taking the heat. be strong, bro.

[Alcibiades]

2. And those charges are ridiculous!

"attempted unlawful duplication of computer material and attempted criminal possession of computer material"

This material was generated by a news organization. It's not an internal strategy document or something that damages their company: it's just video.

Maybe even more Orwellian than the charges against Manning.