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Who has it in for Nine News presenter Amber Sherlock?

It's the kind of mystery her namesake would love - who is the culprit behind the smoking keyboard of the Amber Sherlock take down?

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As Australia was titillated by the leaked vision of Amber Sherlock getting her best diva on for a smack-down of fellow reporter Julie Snook on Nine News Now, two questions are left unanswered.

Who has it in for Amber and why?

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Nine News presenters wardrobe spat

Off air footage leaked to Mumbrella shows Nine journalists Amber Sherlock and Julie Snook have an awkward exchange over their choice of wardrobe.

While the video makes for hilarious viewing, it is also excruciatingly embarrassing for Sherlock.

As Sherlock loses her cool over the fact Snook is wearing the same colour as she was (she wasn't - it was light blue, but even the most modern camera technology struggles to differentiate between the palest cornflower and white), she treats her experienced colleague like a naughty child rather than giving her the respect she is entitled.

"We can't all be wearing [white]... I made this clear 2½ hours ago," she says.

While some may commend her for having only the deepest concern for the visual quality of the program she anchors, this charming little exchange leaves her looking like an entitled, bossy, unprofessional diva.

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And it was never meant to be seen.

Just a select few producers, camera operators, technicians and the poor woman invited as a guest should ever have witnessed that exchange.

Until someone in the Nine newsroom decided to send it to Mumbrella.

This wasn't an occasion when the presenters didn't realise the ad break had finished. 

This was an off-air exchange that was caught because the cameras never actually stop rolling and which was ripped by someone and leaked to the media.

This is a calculated attempt to embarrass and undermine Sherlock.

And, given her effortless take-down of Snook (who manages to come off looking eloquent and professional despite Sherlock's best attempts to shake her), whoever leaked that footage should be quaking in their boots.

If you don't know who Amber Sherlock is, you wouldn't be alone.

A quick Google of her reveals she is something of a finance expert, providing those cheerful market updates from the Commonwealth Bank for Seven and Ten before moving over to Nine in 2007.

Presenting was clearly her career goal and before long she was doing Qantas' inflight news for Nine, before joining Weekend Today and more recently presenting Nine News Now.

A fairly regular career journey for someone with their sights set on a 6pm bulletin job.

But somewhere in that journey she has clearly upset someone and that someone has now taken the most cutting revenge.

TV newsrooms tend to be a fairly protective environment. Publicists protect their on-air talent like the Secret Service protects the president. Internally, even when spats occur, they rarely make it out of the newsroom, both for the fear of the wrath of network bosses and because it could happen to anyone.

But the Nine newsroom in Sydney, where Nine News Now is broadcast, has a bit of a Hunger Games reputation. The presenting slot is highly coveted (who knows why, you could fit the audience in the palm of your carefully manicured hand) and fill-in presenters are wheeled through at break-neck speed on their way to the stardom of a state-wide bulletin.

The buzz in the industry is the journos would shank a granny for a spot on the bulletin.

But just who has shanked Sherlock here is a mystery. Not a lot of people have the access and ability to get the clip out of the newsroom.

The smoking keyboard shouldn't be hard to find.

But while the bosses at Nine are no doubt sniffing the culprit out as we speak, the real question Nine needs to answer (to their staff if not the wider public) is why was Sherlock allowed to speak to a colleague like that and will she be allowed to get away with it.

And I suspect that is the question the culprit was hoping would be answered when they hit send on the email with the video.