The New York Times yesterday panned a controversial new book about the morning TV wars by its own reporter.

“More than a little overblown [and] some of it just plain silly,” the Times reviewer called “Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV” by reporter Brian Stelter, published this week.

An excerpt of the book, released last week, said that NBC bosses had a plan called “Operation Bambi” to unseat Ann Curry from the “Today” show hosting job with Matt Lauer.

It is unusual for a paper to give a bad review to it own writers and is often a sign of editor disapproval.