Joe Muto, an associate producer for 'The O’Reilly Factor' on the Fox News Channel, recently outed himself as a mole hired by the website Gawker.com to leak juicy tidbits. Muto, who has been on The O'Reilly Factor' since 2007, has been suspended indefinitely from his job with pay. Muto does not think he will be returning, but promises more stories.
Muto had previously posted, on Gawker.com, an unaired video of Mitt Romney discussing horseback riding with Sean Hannity and pictures of Fox News' bathrooms with the title "The Thin White Line That Separates Fox News Staffers From Bill O’Reilly on the Shi---r".
Even though Muto has been suspended from his job, Fox News head Roger Ailes oddly claimed he didn't care what Muto was doing: “I don’t care if they have a mole because we aren’t doing anything wrong, so it actually doesn’t matter."
Muto wrote on Gawker.com yesterday:
Two hours ago I was called into a meeting with Dianne Brandi, the Fox News Executive Vice President of Legal and Business Affairs and suspended indefinitely… with pay, oddly enough.
In the end, it was the digital trail that gave me away.
They knew that someone, using my computer login, had accessed the sources for two videos that ended up on Gawker over the past few weeks. They couldn’t prove it entirely, but I was pretty much the only suspect.
I denied it, which is why they didn’t fire me outright. But two nice gentlemen from security escorted me to my desk to pack up my stuff, and it was pretty obvious at that point that I would not be setting foot back into 1211 Avenue of the Americas again.