Fox News critic is fired for bootleg Wolverine review

Was he or wasn’t he? The employment status of Roger Friedman, a columnist for FoxNews.com, became an unlikely flashpoint over the weekend after he posted a review of a bootlegged early version of Wolverine on his site last week. 20th Century Fox (which, like Fox News, is owned by News Corp.) released a nasty statement in response, and before the weekend was out a statement from News Corp. said that Friedman had been “terminated.”

Blogs went nuts, but Friedman denied he had been fired, and tangled rumors made it seem he was right. Finally, earlier this week, Fox News announced that it had, in fact, fired Friedman, at least in so many words: “Fox News representatives and Roger Friedman met today and mutually agreed to part ways immediately. Fox News appreciates Mr. Friedman's 10 years of contributions to building FoxNews.com and wishes him success in his future endeavors. Mr. Friedman is grateful to his colleagues for their friendship and support over the past decade.”

That's classic corporate-speak, but it’s clear what happened. Meanwhile, Michael Wolff suggested on his blog that it probably wasn't the review that got Friedman booted so much as how he wrote about piracy itself. About the Fox brass's finger-wagging attitude toward piracy, he wrote, "They continue to think of this as exceptional behavior, while everybody else knows it’s trivial stuff."

Related links:
News: High-quality version of Wolverine leaks online
Ctrl-V: Trailer Stash: X-Men Origins: Wolverine, etc.
List of the Day: The 29 Most Anticipated Movies of 2009

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