Don't Shoot The Messenger: Rumors Swirl About Brit Hume and Megyn Kendall

It's going to be on all the leftwing sites anyway, so there's no point in my embargoing.

And, yeah-- nothing at all but rumors.

Oddly enough, the MSM has very little difficulty keeping quiet all the affairs the other anchors are rumored to indulge in.

Vengeance By A Fired Flack: The first known instance of the rumor has been confirmed by Radar (no friend of FoxNews, certainly) as being planted, anonymously, in a Wikipedia entry by Hume's former PR guy.

A Fox spokesperson also flatly denied it, and suggested it was being "shopped around" by enemies of the network.

And while that might sound like paranoia, at least one such enemy does exist: publicist Paul Schur, a former Fox spokesman whose job it was to burnish Hume's image just months ago.

Last month, Schur, who worked with both Hume and Kendall in Fox's Washington bureau until he left the network in August, anonymously edited the gossip into Kendall's Wikipedia entry, inserting this claim: "There are many rumors that Kendall has a very 'special' relationship with managing editor Brit Hume, the reason for her plum assignments at Fox News." Radar was alerted to the Wikipedia entry by an anonymous e-mail sent in late December. Wikipedia keeps track of the IP address of each user who changes an entry; when Radar became suspicious that Schur was behind the change to Kendall's entry, a reporter sent him an e-mail with a link to a website maintained by a Radar staffer. When Schur visited the site, his computer's IP address was logged by the site's tracking software, and it matched the IP address of the Wikipedia user that inserted the rumor in Kendall's entry. (The offending sentence has since been deleted.)

Asked whether he had changed the Wikipedia entry or otherwise retailed the rumor, Schur declined to comment. Told of Schur's involvement, Fox's spokesperson said, "If it's true, it's unfortunate he has resorted to this."

It's unclear why Schur left Fox News; insiders described his departure as abrupt and unexplained, suggesting that he may have been trying to exact vengeance on his former employer. Whatever the reason, it's ironic that Fox, which has a notoriously ferocious and loyal PR shop, has been attacked by one of its own.

Thanks to Sinistar for that.

posted by Ace at 08:57 PM

| Access Comments