Olbermann - How I was hired – and fired – by Rupert Murdoch

At the same time, Murdoch's other high-profile American sports disaster was also unravelling. News Corp proved a labyrinthine and tone-deaf owner of baseball's class franchise, the Los Angeles Dodgers. And while I played out my contract as Fox's baseball host, I began to get hints that Murdoch was trying to sell the team. By the middle of April 2001, I had two unimpeachable sources who told me that Murdoch's people were negotiating to return the franchise to its previous owner and a couple of Hollywood producers.

It was a great story – and a great journalistic quandary. My bosses suggested we should run it past Murdoch's personal public relations department, and the answer came back that provided I made it clear that none of the sources were from inside the company, and provided I run the official Murdochian denial, I should report my scoop. Mr Murdoch, we were told, never interfered in the news.

Silly me: I believed him.

The next day, I got a frenzied call from the same columnist. He said he had misspoken. He hadn't heard anything about Murdoch personally firing me. He had heard that I was telling people that Murdoch had done so. Still finding the premise impossible to believe, I told him so. Nothing was ever printed suggesting that Murdoch had fired one of his own people for reporting the truth about his own business with his own publicity man's personal approval. In fact, nobody at Fox or in News Corp ever offered, privately or publicly, any explanation for my ouster – not even after Fox Sports News was cancelled in 2002, nor even after Murdoch finally agreed to sell the Dodgers in 2003 (the team went bankrupt earlier this season).

Nobody ever offered any explanation … that is, until seven years later, when Rupert Murdoch claimed personal responsibility for firing me. From my vantage point, the most important fact remains that, after my exit, Rupert had to keep paying me not to have to work for him: $800,000 over the next eight months.

It was the best job I ever had.
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