Savings Tip For A Busy Executive - Just Assume It's On Tape

How great is it that News Corp. paid $10.75 million to shut this off and here it is in today's paper. How pissed would you be if you paid out all that cash and here's the story anyway. What a waste!

One point of the story is that it's bad that Ailes tried to influence things, but this Regan woman takes the cake.

First off, Ailes says, "hey honey, can you bullshit them for me here?" And she goes, "awlright." And she does it. But she tapes the call! Reminds me of Louis Armstrong. "What a wonderful world." Everybody has a tape recorder by the bed next to the phone. Standard equipment.

"Can you hang on a sec, I have to clear my throat. Ahem. Okay, go on please, you were saying?"

Between Ailes and Regan there's only one set of balls. You go girl!

It was an incendiary allegation — and a mystery of great intrigue in the media world: After the publishing powerhouse Judith Regan was fired by HarperCollins in 2006, she claimed that a senior executive at its parent company, News Corporation, had encouraged her to lie to federal investigators two years before.

The investigators had been vetting Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner who had been nominated to become homeland security secretary and who had had an affair with Ms. Regan.

The goal of the News Corporation executive, according to Ms. Regan, was to keep the affair quiet and protect the then-nascent presidential aspirations of former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Kerik’s mentor and supporter.

But Ms. Regan never revealed the identity of the executive, even as her allegation made headlines and she brought a wrongful termination suit against HarperCollins and News Corporation.

But now, affidavits filed in a separate lawsuit reveal the identity of the previously unnamed executive: Roger E. Ailes, chairman of Fox News.

What is more, the documents say that Ms. Regan taped the telephone call from Mr. Ailes in which Mr. Ailes discusses her relationship with Mr. Kerik.

It is unclear whether the existence of the tape played a role in News Corporation’s decision to move quickly to settle Ms. Regan’s lawsuit, paying her $10.75 million in a confidential settlement reached two months after she filed it in 2007.

[New York Times]