Immediately after our exclusive story that executives at Sony attempted to squash an MSNBC.com story about Will Smith's alleged involvement with Scientology ran last night, Defamer received an email from the MSNBC.com news team stating the following: "We have now heard from Sony - furious that someone at msnbc.com is claiming that they asked us to kill the piece." Shortly thereafter, they updated their original story to include a denial that they had ever been contacted by Sony. As any faithful entertainment news follower is well aware, it is standard practice for media big guns to play the denial card as soon as any poor press hits. However, it is important to note that we here at Defamer are standing by the accuracy of our item; we will not be pressured into pulling it down.

Some take umbrage with our report suggesting buying Yahoo forces Microsoft to sell MSNBC.com to NBC. These sources claim MSNBC.com earns more money than Yahoo News and they'd be surprised to see Microsoft divest itself from such a profitable property. And where there's money, there's motive to renegotiate the contract that restricts what Microsoft can do in the news business.

"I shudder to think about a MSNBC.com and Yahoo News integration," a source formerly employed by both companies in the proposed Microsoft-Yahoo merger tell us. The "cultures," she says, "will be really tough to integrate." In that case, we're happy to report the good news: There's no way it will happen. Legally, Microsoft can't keep both news sites, and if it has to choose between the two, Yahoo News would be its natural choice.