On Monday Fox News confirmed that entertainment blogger Roger Friedman, whose Fox 411 blog is one of the most heavily trafficked features on the Fox News Website, had met with Fox News representatives and they had “mutually agreed to part ways immediately.”  Last Thursday Friedman reviewed the pirated work print of X-Men Origins: Wolverine on his Fox 411 blog, creating an uproar in the blogosphere and considerable consternation at 20th Century Fox, which has a lot riding on the Wolverine movie (see “Early Wolverine Review Raises Kefuffle”).

Since movie sites on the Internet like Ain’t It Cool News had agreed not to review the pirated version of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, bloggers had a field day pillorying Fox News for posting Friedman’s review.  To add insult to injury as far as the Fox studio was concerned, in his review Friedman joked about illegally downloading other recent films in order to catch up on his movie viewing. Over the weekend 20th Century Fox, a sister company of Fox News, announced that Friedman had been fired, but Friedman himself denied it, and Fox News refused comment stating that it was an internal matter—until Monday when the most-watched cable news network announced a parting of the ways with the beleaguered blogger.