ast month, the New York Post fired entertainment reporter Nikki Finke, shortly after the Walt Disney Company complained about two stories that appeared in the Post under Finke's byline on January 29. But did she get the boot because her stories were inaccurate, as the Post and Disney say, or because the Post caved in to pressure from one of News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch's valued business partners, as Finke's lawyers are ready to argue in court?
The offending stories dealt with a breach-of-contract lawsuit filed against Disney in 1991 by Stephen Slesinger Inc., a company that owns merchandising rights to Winnie the Pooh and claims it has been cheated out of millions in royalty payments. The news hook was the January 18 disclosure of court documents revealing that a judge fined Disney $90,000 last year for destroying documents that might or might not have been relevant to the case. The disclosure resulted in a spate of bad publicity in the days following.
Enter Finke, whose anti-Disney stance appears to have turned her into Mickey Mouse's whipping girl. In interviews with the Voice, Disney spokesperson John Dreyer said that Disney sent the Post a letter pointing out "serious factual errors" in Finke's stories, and Disney outside counsel Daniel Petrocelli called parts of her reporting "recklessly inaccurate."
After the stories appeared, sources say, the Post received angry calls from Disney execs. One rumor has it that Disney CEO Michael Eisner personally raged to