IS GE REALLY Paying Paris Hilton $1 Million??? (GE, NWS, PLA)

Today was a bit of an oddball day in true media.  It was all over the media after the New York Post, a News Corp. (NWS-NYSE) company, reported that General Electric (GE-NYSE) was going to pay Paris Hilton an unbelievable hefty sum of $1 Million to conduct her first post-jail interview on NBC’s Today Show.  This is almost laughable, except it shows what media is morphing into. 

The saddest part of this isn’t just that the demand is there for the show and not even about that sum of money.  The real sad part is that it will probably be the most watched television event since the OJ verdict.  It doesn’t sound like the journalist world is too impressed for obvious ‘journalistic’ reasons.  In fact, CNBC’s Larry Kudlow was even making fun or disgust over it AND HE WORKS FOR GENERAL ELECTRIC.

Upon going to the MSNBC website under a "Paris" search it looks like they are also reporting that Hugh Heffner has offered for her to pose in Playboy (PLA-NYSE).  It’s obvious that the version of "news" is out the window.  Television ratings must be sinking even lower than has been said before. 

These are all public companies, using shareholder money.  Right?  Everyone knows the money growns on trees right now in a world awash in liquidity, but it wasn’t known there was money oozing out of the jail cells.

Oh well, I guess it’s time to go look at the real news at The Onion.

Jon C. Ogg
June 21, 2007