title:  Fox News Hacked Phone Records, Emails Of Media Matters Journalists
text: The drama just never ends for poor Fox News, thanks to the shady shenanigans of Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch. It seems they re guilty of far more than rampant sexual harassment of female employees. Ailes loved to find out where other organizations were getting their info on Fox. To that end, he had private investigators get into the phone records of journalists, like those who work at Media Matters For America.Media Matters  official mission is to act as a watchdog on U.S. media. However, for a long time, it seemed their whole mission was to expose the dishonesty that spews forth from the lying monster that is Fox News. One such reporter, Joe Strupp, would repeatedly name anonymous Fox sources in his stories, and, well, of course Ailes couldn t have that. He had to know who these sources were (probably to harass, threaten, and then fire them for good measure).Fox News  legal minion, according to New York Magazine, hired private investigators to obtain Strupp s phone records in 2010. These weren t just phone records from the office, though. They also got hold of records from his home phone and personal cell phone through what NYMag is terming,  legally questionable means. That probably means it was illegal, but Brandi, the legal minion in question, denies that this ever happened. However, one Fox executive told NYMag anyway: This was the culture. Getting phone records doesn t make anybody blink. Even if, and when, it s illegal to do so, apparently.Bradley Beychock, president of Media Matters, spoke to the Daily Beast about these allegations. It appears that Strupp wasn t Fox s only target. According to Beychock: We know there are allegations of email and phone records being obtained, but do not know precisely how. It s part of our internal review now. He also said: We are not sure of how widespread the issue may be in regards to our employees. However, in addition to Joe Strupp there is at least one other current Media Matters colleague who we have reason to believe also had their phone records obtained. In most places, private investigators cannot obtain someone s phone records without their consent, and people rarely give their consent for that. They can also obtain a court order or a subpoena to do it. However, it s not likely Media Matters  employees even knew their communications had been hacked and given to Fox.Fox would not have wanted to wait for the courts, because chances were they knew the courts would shoot them down. This smacks of a company that hopes they could do this without getting caught.At this point, Fox News and its parent, 21st Century Fox, are in way too deep. Their, ahem, questionable business practices are fireballing them right into hell. As Crooks and Liars asked at the end of their story, how far are Murdoch & Co. willing to go to clean this all up?Featured image by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images