How does Fox News' vicious PR department respond to charges it smeared a Times reporter as a drug addict, blamed a pregnant Wall Street Journal reporter's hormones for unfavorable coverage, and that chief Irena Briganti blackballed, bullied and threatened virtually all the reporters she came into contact with? By distributing to TV critics a button with pictures of kittens and hearts, reading "Hugs & Kittens from Fox News Media Relations." Ha ha, get it? It's funny because reporters who can't take Fox's hardball PR tactics are babies who expect to be coddled. Instead, they will be devoured by Fox News chief Roger Ailes, with kittens and human hearts as the appetizer. [TVNewser] (Image via TVNewser)

So, David Carr has gone and pulled the curtain back a bit on Fox PR-the single most vicious PR operation in all the media. Good for him. So let's do our part by zeroing in on the one flack who is the face of Fox's feared, vengeful media relations operation. Her name is Irena Briganti. She's the female alter ego and mouthpiece of Fox boss Roger Ailes (pictured). She's been described as bubbly and charming in person. But she's the one holding the bloody hatchet that Fox regularly brings down right on reporters' heads. Here's everything you need to know about the scariest flack in mediadom:

Last week, Fox News aired nasty Photoshopped pictures of two Times journalists responsible for a story about Fox losing ground among younger viewers. But it sounds like the cable network may have done much worse to another Times reporter, Tim Arango, who wrote a similar article in March. In his column for tomorrow's paper, Times media columnist David Carr recounts tales of Fox's dirty-politics-style PR tactics against journalists from his paper, the Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press and others. One story, in particular, stands out:

Have you ever flipped over to the Sci Fi Channel and wondered why it was showing wrestling, or a series about superheroes' naughty wives, or a movie like Field of Dreams or Indiana Jones? It's because this sort of brand dilution is the only way to reach women and thus grow ratings, Sci Fi President Dave Howe believes. He told the Times, "It's not just aliens, spaceships and the future... It's about asking that simple question, 'What if?'" His NBC cylon overlord Bonnie Hammer found a more menacing way to say the same thing:

The Wall Street Journal has a cartoon called "Pepper... And Salt" which — and I did not know this after 12 years of reading the Journal — has been "edited since 1950 by Charles Preston... [and] is culled from hundreds of submissions each week." Anyway, the 'toon was once in the paper's Arts & Leisure section, and it must have been too controversial (ahem) because it was moved to the editorial page in April 2007. But now Rupert Murdoch is pretty much personally editing the whole Journal, and "Pepper... And Salt" is moving back to Arts & Leisure. Why? Possibly so the right-leaning media mogul can unleash a horrifying "Murdochian brand of editorial cartoon!" Reports the Times :

That "MILF Island" episode of 30 Rock everyone was talking about Friday? In which 20 hot moms square off in front of 50 eighth-grade boys at "Erection Cove?" It aired during NBC's "Family Hour," in which the whole family is supposed to be able to gather in front of the TV together. NBC executive Ben Silverman re-launched the concept just 10 days ago. Anyone who took the man at his word — and hopefully few people did — either had a very awkward night or has a very interesting family. Now NBC is trying to rewrite what it meant by "family hour." Here's network exec Mitch Metcalf in tomorrow's Times:

HarperCollins Publishers decided that the book biz is too hard these days so it's going to try and get everyone else to do its job for it. Its books don't sell? That's the bookstores' problem; HarperCollins' new division will take no returns, or at least that's the goal. Writers need to eat while writing? That's what crippling credit card debt is for, losers; the new unit will pay "low or no advances," according to the Times, preferring to only fork out cash when it has made whatever it defines as a profit on a book. Here, the executive in charge of the new division explains how all this benefits you, the struggling writer. Just kidding, here's how he says it makes sense for his company:

The top American anchor on Al Jazeera English left the controversial Qatar-based news network because, he said, the whole thing was getting a little too Middle Eastern. According to the Times, "headquarters in Doha provided more and more direction about the assignment of stories and the point of view... the English-language channel started to more closely resemble its larger sibling, the prominent Arabic-language channel Al Jazeera, he said." Americans and Brits have been upset about funding and alleged political interference for months. Things looked much different two years ago, when the anchor, Dave Marash, braved Stephen Colbert's show to champion the channel, arguing that Al Jazeera's English-language channel was virtually autonomous from the Arabic channel in Qatar:

To publicize the re-release of teen fiction series Sweet Valley High, Random House Children's Books sent a letter to journalists highlighting the changes made to the content of the 1980s paperbacks. New cover girl Leven Rambin (pictured) was not mentioned, but just to make sure preteen and teenaged girl readers are sufficiently insecure about their bodies, the publisher made the "perfect" clothing size a couple of notches more restrictive. It seems kids in the 80s lived by totally fat standards. Also, Sweet Valley High students now have their own anonymous blog, presumably to hatefully bully the fattest of their classmates. Here's a helpful chart from the Random House letter, followed by the letter itself:

This morning, former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan is warning of the worst financial crisis since World War II, the Wall Street Journal is reporting on its front page that "Banks Fear a Deepening of Turmoil," Asian stocks plunged and the federal government is financing the purchase by JP Morgan Chase of fast-collapsing investment bank Bear Stearns for less than a tenth of its stock market capitalization and about one-quarter of the value of its headquarters building. The biggest story for the moment, and the biggest single cause the current wave of fear, is the near bankruptcy of Stearns this weekend after its trading partners started asking for money owed, its credit ratings got cut and banks stopped lending the company money against even top-quality mortgage bonds. Where was the Bear Stearns' Chairman, James Cayne amid all this? Playing bridge in a tournament, a source told the Journal, until he finally returned to New York Saturday, two days after lenders starting reining in the company's credit. This is the same James Cayne embarrassed in the Times in July for playing golf amid another Stearns near-meltdown and downright humiliated in the Journal just this past November, after another time he played bridge during a company crisis, and also allegedly smoked pot:

Troublemaking "gangsta" rapper Ice Cube made a video taking aim at white-collar wrongdoers like Enron and Halliburton, then promptly partnered with another white-collar, white-run wrongdoer, Microsoft, which has been punished for antitrust violations on two continents and has fomented a virtual army of haters. The business deal, which includes software for Ice Cube's new internet TV network, is quite a turn for a rapper who started out in the late 1980s with raps like "Fuck the Police" and "A Bitch is a Bitch" before moving on to albums in which he called white people "devils," Korean storekeepers "little chop suey ass[es]" and basically issued repeated calls for the overthrow of various levels of government. Of course, Ice Cube and Microsoft executives do share a certain disdain for U.S. law enforcement authorities. After the jump, the press release announcing Ice Cube's hard core partnership with "the Man" of the computing world and an excerpt from his new video, in which Ice Cube name-checks Allah and makes fun of corporate criminals like the one he just went into business with.

Less than two weeks ago, the staff of Bestweekever.tv put together a spirited and inventive internet campaign whose mission was to convince NBC not to cancel Friday Night Lights. By all accounts, it seemed to be working well; not only did it receive a healthy amount of press coverage, BWE.tv was able to convince over 10,000 people to sign an online petition to save the show. However, over the weekend, all mention of the campaign mysteriously disappeared from the site's homepage. So we decided to do some digging.

A New York Times scoop on a possible $1 billion settlement between drug company Eli Lilly and federal prosecutors was triggered when a lawyer for Lilly accidentally sent reporter Alex Berenson (left) an email intended for his second cousin, lawyer Bradford Berenson. Portfolio, the Conde Nast business magazine, broke the story Monday and, in the days since, the Times has bent over backward minimize the role of the accidental emailer. It knocked Portfolio's scoop on the incident as overblown and wrong, and, after stonewalling that magazine, granted interviews and issued a statement to several blogs that likewise knocked Portfolio's reporting. Now Alex Berenson has appeared on NPR to discuss the incident at some length and, guess what? It turns out Porfolio wasn't so wrong after all!

Oh dippy Gourmet magazine, with your oxymoronic job ads. There's no such thing as a "full-time freelance" job, sillies! Not that the Condé Nast magazine is alone with this shifty little recruitment tactic, designed to get the most out of contractors for as little as humanly possible. So bothersome, those taxes and benefits. More exploity media job ads after the jump. Apply at your own risk!

MTV president Christina Norman called it quits yesterday, announcing her decision at a council meeting. "Something about 'the company being in a good place,' but wanting some 'time for herself,'" a source said. In a longwinded email to staff, MTV Networks president Van Toffler extolled Norman's virtues, praising her as the "architect" of "VH1's rebirth" who "gave the world 'Celebreality,' along with 'Hip Hop Honors,'" which is very nearly as noble as curing cancer! You've got to hand it to Norman for surviving 17 years at MTV, where she started as a freelance production manager: "Yes, freelance," Toffler writes. See permalancers? You too could maybe possibly someday be a somebody! Yay! Just make sure you don't get sick, because then you're totally screwed. Full announcement after the jump.

Over 1,000 lucky MTV Networks contractors are being converted to staff from their previous freelancer status, we've been told, in a move to appease angry contractors upset over December benefit cuts. "In the HR meeting they had yesterday with the middle- to upper-management peeps that have the honor of conveying this (mostly good) news: They paused early on in their presentation to say, "By the way, this is not about the writing and the Gawker...these discussions have been going on for a long time," an MTV source said. We're sure it had nothing whatsoever to do with all those people chanting in the streets, either. And introduced by a definite article? We've arrived. Congratulations on the benefits, kids. Go nuts at the orthopedist's.
Earlier: Memo: Judgment Day On Permanent Jobs For MTV Freelancers

The time has come for MTV Networks beleaguered slavey permalancers to learn their fate. Brand-new human resources lady Catherine Houser issued a memo an hour ago to the Viacom subsidiary's contractors, announcing they would learn if they were among the lucky group whose positions will be converted to staff jobs, as promised in December. On what basis will a permalancer earn job security and benefits? Among the benchmarks: "The position would be staff if there was headcount." Uhh...what? "The position transcends a specific project or show," is another. Considering that a key issue in the uproar over Viacom's benefit cuts last month centered around the frequent rotation of workers (which made it hard for them to accrue the required time needed to qualify for benefits), it sounds like MTVN has given itself a whole lot of leeway with that one. So you've been an MTVN cameraman for nine years? As far as Viacom is concerned, you only spent four months at a time on Pimp My Ride and Cribs, so you're shit out of luck, pal. God be with you, and also with you and you. Let us know how it goes. After the jump, the memo in full.

Is this what it takes to sate an angry mob of permalancers? JoAnne Griffith, the HR exec who delivered to the cable network's freelancers the news before the holidays that their benefits were being cut, is out. MTV, which was forced to reverse the cuts after a walkout by non-salaried workers, came out with the usual boilerplate on Griffith's departure. (Really, why do they even bother?) "She's been a phenomenal leader and great champion for MTV Networks,""This is a large, complex company, and with JoAnne's great human touch and innovative approach to HR, we continue to set a high bar and strive for the best for you," an internal email sent this morning to MTV employees reads. Irreplaceable? No. Replacement Catherine Houser, "has the people skills, innovative ideas, and passion for our company and its employees that we need in an HR leader." Phew. Email and official release after the jump.

We sacrificed vidkid Alex Goldberg to possible pneumonia and sent him to check out the joint WGA-Viacom protest outside Viacom this afternoon. There was some confusion among WGAers about what exactly they were doing in midtown, other than, you know, trying for the 39th day in a row to get paid or something. "The MTV freelancers, what?" said one guy, dismissing us swiftly by explaining that "It's the Viacom building so it's very high-profile." You don't say! Any thoughts on the never-ending writers strike, the length of which is inching us closer and closer with each passing day to watching The World's Most Smartest Model? "I thought they resolved that a couple weeks ago," someone walking out of the Viacom building told us. "I don't really go to Broadway shows," he apologized. Uh....

Boss Tweed makes a comeback outside the offices of MTV Networks this morning! Hey, at least he's marginally cuter than the Union Rat, who's needed a serious upgrade since, like, 1974. Viacom is having an information session for freelancers on benefits changes today, according to Mediabistro. When? At the same time as the WGA-MTV protest of course! Tricky and clever!