To your right is Roger Friedman, a columnist for FoxNews.com. On Thursday, Friedman posted a review of the illegally leaked copy of X-Men Origins: Wolverine which openly admitted he had seeked out the film on the internet and actually ended by encouraging people to watch pirated movies.
Meanwhile, of course, Fox News’ sibling company Twentieth-Century Fox and parent company News Corp were in major damage control over the leak — which could conceivably cost the studio millions in lost box office revenue — and had declared they were working with the FBI to find the source of the leak and prosecute the offender to the fullest extent of the law. And here was some shmuck from inside their ranks advocating to go watch it.
Twentieth-Century Fox responded swiftly with this statement:
We’ve just been made aware that Roger Friedman, a freelance columnist who writes Fox 411 on Foxnews.com - an entirely separate company from 20th Century Fox - watched on the internet and reviewed a stolen and unfinished version of X-Men Orgins: Wolverine. This behavior is reprehensible and we condemn this act categorically - whether the review is good or bad.
While News Corp also weighed in:
Roger Friedman’s views in no way reflect the views of News Corporation. We, along with 20th Century Fox Film Corporation, have been a consistent leader in the fight against piracy and have zero tolerance for any action that encourages and promotes piracy. Once we learned of Roger Friedman’s post we asked Fox News to remove it, which they did immediately.
It was a no-brainer that Friedman, who must either be completely oblivious or have a really mistaken sense of job security (probably both), had to be fired. According to Deadline Hollywood Daily, Fox News overseer Roger Ailes fired Friedman, which was followed up on Sunday with another statement from News Corp:
Roger Friedman’s views in no way reflect the views of News Corporation. We, along with 20th Century Fox Film Corporation, have been a consistent leader in the fight against piracy and have zero tolerance for any action that encourages and promotes piracy. When we advised Fox News of the facts they took immediate action, removed the post, and promptly terminated Mr. Friedman.
However, in this morning’s Variety article about the situation, they state that on Sunday afternoon, Friedman told them he hadn’t been fired yet, and a Fox News spokesperson called it “an internal matter that we’re not prepared to discuss at this time.”
That most likely means that News Corp is pressing Fox News to fire Friedman but some of the Fox News higher-ups are fighting back because Friedman’s column is popular. If he ends up staying on, it will be an enormous slap in the face to Twentieth-Century Fox and an embarrassment to News Corp in general.
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