Dancing Like The Stars

clipped from www.claynewsnetwork.com Local celebrities will be participating on April 26th by dancing at the competition during the Southern Women's Show at the State Fairgrounds. This is the second year that this fundraiser has taken place. It is wonderful to see the Raleigh Broadcast media supporting the foundation. Last week, the two contestants representing NBC posted videos of their practices. So, not to be outdone, the two contestants from WRAL-TV posted videos of their adventures in dance. Valonda Calloway and Monica Laliberte are both anchors at WRAL and have been practicing hard with their professional partner. All proceeds from the contest benefit the Bubel/Aiken Foundation, which was co-founded in 2003 by Raleigh native Clay Aiken. The nonprofit promotes the inclusion of children with disabilities in activities with children who are not disabled.

Roger Friedman Crosses the Line

Wow. Looks like Roger Friedman went too far this time! Seems like he got himself fired. Here is the scoop from Nikki Finke's Deadline Daily:

Fox News Fires Showbiz Columnist For "Promoting" Piracy
[...]there was universal shock on Friday when long-time "Fox 411" freelance columnist Roger Friedman wrote what I'm told his bosses felt was a blatant promotion of piracy on his Fox News web outlet. Besides writing a review from watching the purloined print of Wolverine, Friedman posted, “I did find the whole top 10 [movies in theaters], plus TV shows, commercials, videos, everything, all streaming away. It took really less than seconds to start playing it all right onto my computer. I could have downloaded all of it but really, who has the time or the room? Later tonight I may finally catch up with Paul Rudd in I Love You, Man. It’s so much easier than going out in the rain!” I'm told that Fox News' actions were swift and severe. First, Roger Ailes, who overseas Fox News, deleted the offending post after he was contacted by 20th Century Fox about it. And then Ailes fired Friedman as a freelance Fox News entertainment writer. I hear the move was done with the full support of News Corp. "He promoted piracy. He basically suggested that viewing a stolen film is OK, which is absolutely intolerable. So we fired him," a source told me Saturday. "Fox News acted promptly on all fronts."[...]

[...]News Corp issued this statement: “Roger Friedman’s views in no way reflect the views of News Corporation. We, along with 20th Century Fox Film Corporation, have been a consistent leader in the fight against piracy and have zero tolerance for any action that encourages and promotes piracy. Once we learned of Roger Friedman’s post we asked Fox News to remove it, which they did immediately.”

And Fox said, "We’ve just been made aware that Roger Friedman, a freelance columnist who writes Fox 411 on Foxnews.com – an entirely separate company from 20th Century Fox -- watched on the internet and reviewed a stolen and unfinished version of X-Men Orgins: Wolverine. This behavior is reprehensible and we condemn this act categorically -- whether the review is good or bad."[...]

Anyone who has read my blog knows my complete contempt for Roger Friedman for his misogynistic, hatefully skewed and badly reported stories full of misinformation and factual errors. His firing was long in coming. Unfortunately, I have no doubt he will turn up again like a bad penny. I can only hope that this incident will strip him of any shred of credibility in the future.

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Roger Friedman, Fox News, Wolverine, piracy