Blog Posts by Joe Pompeo

The Church of Scientology has been known to go to great lengths to retaliate against members of the press who produce skeptical reports about its operations. Case in point: last summer, when the church produced an entire magazine devoted to blasting Anderson Cooper, and then handed the rag out in front of CNN headquarters.

The church's latest target is the New Yorker, which published a 25,000-word profile by Lawrence Wright of celebrity Scientology defector Paul Haggis back in February. The piece depicted alleged widespread corruption and otherwise bizarre behavior within the institutional hierarchy of the screenwriter's former religion.

Six months later, Scientologists are now milling about outside the Conde Nast building distributing a 51-page parody issue of their in-house magazine, Freedom, called "The New Yorker: What a Load of Balderdash," as well as a three-part DVD series attacking the venerable weekly.

The New York Times reports: "The church goes to surprising lengths in attempting to discredit The New Yorker and its staff, naming editors, fact-checkers and others who worked on the Scientology article by name . . . . The church mocks The New Yorker as no better than a supermarket tabloid and even created a fake New Yorker cover with the headline 'Remnick Denies Alien Baby Claim,' a dig at the magazine's editor, David Remnick."

Our list of stories that should be on your morning media menu:

• Jeremy Peters on the new breed of campaign reporters: "It is not so glamorous anymore." (New York Times)

• Jeff Bercovici asks: "Could Bill O'Reilly drag Fox News into the hacking probe?" (Forbes)

• In a massive news month, Fox News finished third in all of cable prime-time while CNN cruised past MSNBC. (The Wrap)

• The Weather Channel, meanwhile, saw a ratings surge thanks to Hurricane Irene. (NYT/Media Decoder)

• Erin Burnett has unveiled the first promo for her forthcoming CNN prime-time show. (CNN)

• Bernie Madoff seems to have found a confidante in Charlie Gasparino. (ABC News)

• "Why was a Beverly Hills paparazzo staking out Carl Bernstein?" (Gawker)

Richard Drew

As part of the Yahoo! News "9/11 Remembered" series marking the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks, I profiled Richard Drew, the AP photographer who captured the famous "Falling Man" shot that became the subject of 2003 Esquire piece by Tom Junod.

Earlier this summer, I accompanied Drew to the spot where he took the "Falling Man" photo a block from Ground Zero. He retraced his steps from that day for the first time in 10 years, telling me of his experience: "I get so caught up in the adrenaline of doing this job. So, looking back on it, I think a lot about being able to go home to my family every night. Whether I decide to think about it daily or not, it's always in the back of my mind."

Here's an excerpt from the piece:

Richard Drew put down his camera bag and looked up at the colossal skyscraper that seemed to be racing toward the clouds at an accelerated clip.

"I don't like coming down here," he admitted.

"I'm really surprised how fast this building's gone

(image via Gawker)The war between Gawker and Fox News just got a little uglier.

After months of digging up dirt on Roger Ailes, the chairman and CEO of the top-rated cable news network, Gawker sleuth John Cook has unearthed some potentially damaging dish on Fox News primetime stalwart Bill O'Reilly.

In Cook's latest investigative report, he writes: "Last summer, Fox News anchor Bill O'Reilly came to believe that his wife was romantically involved with another man. Not just any man, but a police detective in the Long Island community they call home. So O'Reilly did what any concerned husband would do: He pulled strings to get the police department's internal affairs unit to investigate one of their own for messing with the wrong man's lady."

The piece is sourced to "someone who has a longstanding personal relationship with [the detective who was allegedly tapped to probe his fellow officer], and who heard the account directly from [that detective] himself. The source provided contemporaneous e-mail traffic to support his account."

All the relevant parties were contacted for comment, including Fox News, which fired back with a vigorous dismissal of Cook's story. (Disclosure: Cook used to be a reporter at Yahoo!, where he worked with the team that produces the blog you are now reading.)

Richard Drew (Joe Pompeo)As part of the Yahoo! News "9/11 Remembered" series marking the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks, I profiled Richard Drew, the AP photographer who captured the famous "Falling Man" shot that became the subject of 2003 Esquire piece by Tom Junod.

Earlier this summer, I accompanied Drew to the spot where he took the "Falling Man" photo a block from Ground Zero. He retraced his steps from that day for the first time in 10 years, telling me of his experience: "I get so caught up in the adrenaline of doing this job. So, looking back on it, I think a lot about being able to go home to my family every night. Whether I decide to think about it daily or not, it's always in the back of my mind."

Here's an excerpt from the piece:

Murdoch (AP/Kirsty Wigglesworth)As the saga of the British phone-hacking scandal continues slowly to unfold, News International, the British arm of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, has confirmed it is conducting a thorough internal investigation of its properties. The company had already been forced to shutter its 168-year-old Sunday tabloid, the News of the World, when it was buffetted by damaging disclosures about the illegal practice of breaking into sources' voicemail accounts.

"As is widely known, a review of journalistic standards is under way at News International with [London law firm] Linklaters assisting in the process," a News International spokesman said in a statement provided to The Cutline. "This is part of a process that started a number of weeks ago and is under the ultimate control of the News Corp board through the independent director Viet Dinh, [former New York City schools chancellor] Joel Klein and the Management and Standards Committee."

The years-long phone-hacking scandal exploded in July after it was revealed that journalists at News of the World allegedly tapped into the voicemails of a murdered 13-year-old girl, while also bribing police and committing other transgressions in the pursuit of scoops.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange (AP)When WikiLeaks, the online clearing-house of secret documents, unleashes a new body of material, another installment of feuding with print-media outlets is bound to ensue--and the latest such release was no exception. After WikiLeaks pushed a new cache of diplomatic cables into the public domain, the group promptly lashed out at the New York Times for an article published in the paper of record's Tuesday print edition.

The Times piece, "WikiLeaks Leaves Names of Diplomatic Sources in Cables," takes WikiLeaks to task for its largest-yet leak of U.S. diplomatic cables, 134,000 of which have been published on the web in recent days.

Some of the documents, according to the Times' Scott Shane, reveal the names of sources who had spoken to American envoys on a confidential basis--a "shift of tactics that has alarmed American officials," Shane writes. "State Department officials and human rights activists have been concerned that such diplomatic sources, including activists, journalists and academics in authoritarian countries, could face reprisals, including dismissal from their jobs, prosecution or violence."

Shane adds: "Since late 2010, The New York Times and several other news organizations have had access to more than 250,000 State Department cables originally obtained by WikiLeaks, citing them in news articles and publishing a relatively small number of cables deemed newsworthy. But The Times and other publications that had access to the documents removed the names of people judged vulnerable to retaliation."

Our list of stories that should be on your morning media menu:

• CNN's Piers Morgan convened a panel to discuss whether Hurricane Irene was hyped. (Mediaite)

• AOL's Patch got a traffic boost from its coverage of the storm. (FishbowlNY)

• Fox News anchor Shep Smith recalls his 9/11 coverage. (Daily News)

• Paul Smalera suggests how Slate can "reboot." (Reuters)

• Are Tina Brown's controversial Newsweek covers selling? (Adweek)

• New York Times photographer Joao Silva writes about the day he lost his legs to a landmine. (Lens/NYT)