The Fox News Attack Machine in Action

Call it "yellow-teeth journalism." Fox News lashed out today at two New York Times journalists with a hilariously dishonest attack intended as revenge for a critical story about the cable news channel's ratings.

On June 28, Times reporter Jacques Steinberg wrote about an "ominous trend" for Fox: Its ratings have been flat while CNN and MSNBC's have been growing rapidly. That article was the subject of a segment on this morning's Fox & Friends, where Steinberg was made out to be a pawn of his editor, Steven Reddicliffe, who supposedly harbors a grudge against Fox's parent, News Corp., for firing him as editor of TV Guide.

But the Fox & Friends hosts, Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade, didn't just peddle their conspiracy theory -- they also illustrated it with crudely Photoshopped images of Reddicliffe and Steinberg, digitally altered to make them look ugly and possibly British. They also repeatedly cited Radar Online (where I used to work) as the source of the theory that Reddicliffe has an anti-Fox bias. In fact, Radar had dismissed the theory as "a bit of a stretch." (Radar reiterates today that it never said what Fox says it said.)

I called Reddicliffe to hear his side of the story but haven't heard back. Nor did Fox have a comment on the Photoshopping. Of course, if Reddicliffe didn't have bad feelings towards Fox before, surely he will now that it has taken to publicly questioning his integrity and dental hygiene.

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