The drama surrounding executive pay czar Kenneth Feinberg‘s Thursday round-robin interviews with the press pool just keeps going and going. Mediaite reported Saturday that Fox News claimed the White House had apologized for a “mistake by a low level person at the Treasury Department,” a claim which the White House now refutes.

developing

On Thursday night, Fox News reported that the “Obama administration” had taken its “first concrete step” in treating Fox News Channel like it’s not a real news organization, excluding them from a press event. Through our own reporting, Mediaite has learned that Fox News’ report of this incident was, at best, incomplete and self-serving, and serves as a neat encapsulation of what Robert Gibbs told us the first time we asked him if the White House was “bullying” Fox News.

exclusive

We reported earlier that when Fox News was banned from a round-robin interview with Obama administration “Pay Czar” Kenneth Feinberg, the bureau chiefs of the other major networks banded together to thwart the White House.

Now, Mediaite has learned exclusively that the Treasury Department, who set up the interviews, denies the story.