Michael Calderone seems to have come to his senses about Michael Wolff. His latest posting for Politico, on the inaccuracies in Wolff's book shows some solid reporting--for a change.
On Friday, The Cable Gamer noted that Calderone was hopelessly misreporting the "hot stuff" in Wolff's new tell-it-all-wrong book, The Man Who Owns The News, ignoring the fact that the best item--that Rupert Murdoch dislikes Roger Ailes--was simply wrong.
Now, Calderone seems eager to report the various additional refutations of Wolff's book:
During the Dow Jones takeover, in June 2007, the New York Times embarked on a multi-bureau investigation of Rupert Murdoch, led by managing editor Jill Abramson.
According to Michael Wolff’s forthcoming Murdoch biography, "The Man Who Owns The News," the Times had planned to publish more than the two front page pieces on the media mogul, written by Jo Becker and Joe Kahn. But criticism from Gary Ginsberg, News Corp.’s executive VP of Global Marketing and Corporate Affairs, helped clamp down the paper’s efforts, according to Wolff.
Wolff wrote:
“The Times turns out to be quite an inept attack dog. Its team of reporters has, at great expense, failed to turn up anything new. What’s more, News Corp.’s own response — in a statement drafted by Ginsberg — so cows the Times that it cancels the rest of its planned series. All this supports Murdoch’s view of the Times: While it is, in this attack, “using its news pages to advance its own corporate agenda,” it cannot even do that well. So what will become of it?”
Abramson, in an e-mail to Politico, said “the idea that we canceled the ‘rest’ of the series is nonsense. There were not more than two pieces scheduled to run.”
As for Wolff’s characterization of the Times’ reporting, Abramson wrote the following.
“I do care, as you can imagine, that Wolff's account is full of falsehood. Our pieces turned up lots of new things. Surely they would not have evoked as loud a howl from Ginsberg otherwise. And, as is true with all our news coverage, the series was driven by the news, not any so-called corporate agenda.”
So The New York Times declares to Calderone that Wolff's book is "full of falsehood," and Calderone puts it in his piece.
For Calderone, that's a big change from his admiring tone of just three days ago. So what might account for the change? Two possibilities: First, maybe getting slapped around by the Cable Gamer knocked some sense into Calderone. Second, and more likely, Calderone was keeping a commitment to Wolff: Say something nice about the book, in return for a sneak peek. But now that transaction has been completed, so Calderone can go back to saying what he really thinks.
