Oh, the Hypocrisy of Fox News
Reported by Melanie - December 1, 2004
There have been times in the past when Fox News has railed against other media conglomerates for engaging in what Fox has hyped as shameless self-promotion. A case in point was during the spring of this year when Richard Clarke appeared on 60 Minutes, testified before the 9/11 Commission, and released his book, Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror, almost simultaneously. Fox spent a fair amount of time implying that the whole thing was a plot, orchestrated by Viacom, CBS's parent company and the owner of Simon & Schuester, the publisher of Clarke's book.
During those days, Fox seized the bull by the horn and took every opportunity to undermine Richard Clarke and the oh-so-liberal CBS, implying they were opportunistic gold diggers, who couldn't be trusted because they were clearly out for nothing more than publicity and book sales. This tact came in handy for another reason too, that being that anything negative Richard Clarke said about the Bush administration's preparedness (or lack thereof) for a terror strike prior to 9/11, could be painted as untrustworthy, because, after all, Clarke was only trying to create a sensation in order to sell more books.
Today (December 1, 2004) on Your World w/Neil Cavuto, with a picture of the cover of his book, More than Money, and the home page of his new book-selling website on screen, Cavuto said this:
"Well, you know, a lot of you have been given to requesting this, I guess for the holidays and all, so to satisfy your yuletide urge for all things Cavuto, we've set up a site for you to order a signed copy of More than Money. Click onto a very festive mycavuto.com, again, mycavuto.com, and you can get a signed book going your way well in time for Christmas. Imagine the unmitigated joy, darn near tearful reaction you'll get from loved ones this holiday season with the ultimate holiday treasure."
More than Money is published by Regan Books, which is owned by Fox News' parent company, News Corp. I suggest a visit to our category News Corp. Hegemony. There you'll see those incidents of self-promotion done by Fox News and News Corp. which we've witnessed over the past six months or so. There you'll also see a list of all the times that we've heard Neil Cavuto's book being promoted on the Fox News channel (I doubt we've heard them all). As you can see, Fox News has absolutely no business ranting and raving about the self-promotion done by other media outlets as they do plenty of it themselves.
