Academic

MEDIA HYPOCRISY OF THE FIRST ORDER: Bankrupt Tribune gives bonuses after berating AIG: Two month?

By Glenn Reynolds

MEDIA HYPOCRISY OF THE FIRST ORDER: Bankrupt Tribune gives bonuses after berating AIG:

Two months after denouncing a troubled financial company for doling out hefty management bonuses, a bankrupt news media company is doing the same thing.

“Money for nothing?” blared a Chicago Tribune editorial in mid-March, responding to news that American International Group Inc. planned to give $450 million in bonuses to its top executives during a very public federal bailout.

But this week, the Tribune Co. - which owns the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the Baltimore Sun, the Hartford Courant and other dailies, along with 23 TV stations - received permission from a Delaware bankruptcy judge to pay out $13.3 million in bonuses to some 700 local and corporate managers.

The payouts come as $2.7 million in severance pay to 68 employees who lost their jobs last year remains frozen.

Funny how these media companies seldom live up to their own professed standards of corporate behavior.

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on May 14, 2009 (boomark / email).