Culture

Fox News Fires Reporter Over Illegal 'Wolverine' Movie Review

by Jarrett Martineau | April 6, 2009 at 04:01 pm

1026 views | 33 Recommendations | 7 comments

Fox News is not a network to shy away from slamming internet pirates and illegal downloaders — especially those discovered amongst their own ranks.

After discovering that columnist Roger Friedman had filed a review of the upcoming film X-Men Origins: Wolverine based on an "illegally downloaded copy", the network fired him on the spot.

Although Friedman was just of more than 75,000 people who downloaded the leaked version of the movie, it was his public review of the "stolen" goods that sealed his fate.

Fox then went a step further and condemned Friedman's relatively minor act of journalistic piracy as "reprehensible" behavior.

Do you think Fox should have fired the reporter for reviewing an illegally obtained copy of the film?

Columnist Roger Friedman is out at FoxNews.com after reviewing an illegally downloaded copy of Fox's "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" last week.

Friedman, who wrote the Fox411 column for FoxNews.com, met with Fox News execs Monday. Following the meeting, the company issued a statement saying the parties had "mutually agreed to part ways immediately."

Fox -- pointing that out Fox News is a separate business under the News Corp. banner -- responded Friday, "This behavior is reprehensible and we condemn this act categorically, whether the review is good or bad."

Parent News Corp. issued its own condemnation, saying, "Roger Friedman's views in no way reflect the views of News Corp.," and adding, "Once we learned of Roger Friedman's post, we asked Fox News to remove it, which they did immediately."

For Friedman's part, he's done his best to respond with a little knowing humor:

Friedman would not comment except to say, "Reports of my death have been extremely exaggerated."

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Bienvenido Cruz (not verified)

at 16:11 on April 6th, 2009

this seems like an amateur move on the reporter's part. why not just wait for the press screening?
oh right, it's because fox news isn't a real news outlet.

foxynews (not verified)

at 16:23 on April 6th, 2009

how about firing staff for their truly egregious behaviors... like their "unbiased" reporting :)

Drew Bulman

at 16:44 on April 6th, 2009

Hm. I wouldn't expect to hold on to my job if I reviewed a movie based on an illegally downloaded video file.

Mary Richard

at 16:57 on April 6th, 2009

Hmm ... I didn't know that movie was on the go already.

mudricky

at 22:58 on April 6th, 2009

No, he's using soruces he can access to bring in a quick review - even though it is breaking the law.

Eyerishize (not verified)

at 09:46 on April 7th, 2009

If Fox really wanted him to survive this mess, his immediate supervisor would have gone to bat for him...but no one did. I feel sorry for the reporter, as he was trying to get Fox a "scoop"

Assi9 (not verified)

at 13:59 on April 14th, 2009

No. He clearly did not understand that what he was doing was wrong. There are sites selling essentially usenet access and torrent trackers designed as perfectly legal ways to watch films and television shows.

He referred to a streaming service. This is even a lesser offense in my opinion. He was not seeking out ways to download the movie and got caught up in the streaming media hoopla which also disguises itself on some sights as legal.

YOUTUBE even has people posting full movies and tv.

But the big question, SHOULD HE HAVE KNOWN? Well, I know several older folks that I actually have had to recommend FANCAST because it is LEGAL. My dad is in his 60s and was streaming movies and tv before that were probably NOT LEGAL and he PAID for the service, purchasing it eBAY having no idea if he could trust that it was legal or not. It was clearly not legal in our country in my opinion, BUT HE DOESN'T KNOW THAT HE WORKS AND WORKS AND WORKS and doesn't hang out on the internet all the time. Some people don't know. They really don't have any idea. They don't.

Hopefully this is just sending a message and they will go easy on the guy OR investigate whether he was a crazy pirate downloader who knew what he was doing and estimate the damage done. But I think he is just someone who doesn't know the difference between HULU and those stupid sites that make you pay to download stuff they don't even own.