Opinion: CNN.com pushes Cooper’s book…
CNN’s Todd Leopold writes about Anderson Cooper’s book and has an interview with Cooper.
He admits to having mixed feelings about his job. “Dispatches” is full of self-deprecation, acknowledgements that preparing a news story is as much about separating your emotions from the story — through gallows humor, tunnel vision or simple numbness — as it is about investing your emotions in the story.
” ‘I’ve become what I once hated,’ I thought to myself — sadly, not for the first time,” he writes at one point, describing his presence at the scrum during Terri Schiavo’s last days.
But he’s taken care to hold on to his humanity, aware that it’s something that’s easy to lose.
This raises all sorts of conflict of interest questions about where to draw the line in regards to how a network handles a book by one of its employees. I think CNN would have been better off not doing this. This is different from what happens on FNC where a show host like O’Reilly, Cavuto, or Gibson plugs his book. If Cooper plugs his book on AC 360 I’m fine with that. This is another thing entirely in my opinion.
How is CNN plugging Cooper’s book any different than Fox plugging their anchors’ many books? There is no difference that I can see between the two.
Comment by MGM — June 1, 2006 @ 6:01 pm
Really, MGM. And considering he’s a paid contributor eport for Oprah, and CBS, and Details magazine, it’s kind of like he’s a freelancer anyway.
Comment by anonymous — June 1, 2006 @ 9:05 pm
How funny..Is coop hocking his book on his program like all the fnc people do on their programs? Is there a double standard here that it’s ok for fnc to promote their people’s books and cnn can’t do the same? And haven’t fnc people promoted their books on other peoples shows…I think so. fnc has all the reasons to promote their peoples books around the clock since the publisher is apart of newscorp. So spud, stop taking advice from johnny dollar and think for yourself!
Comment by Tim — June 1, 2006 @ 10:59 pm
Wait a minute. Guesting on a TV show at your own netowrk to promote a book and having the books editor on another netowrk, CNN.com, review your book are very different things. Tim Russsert whored himself out to anyone who would take him, but MSNBC didnt’ review his book. It crosses the journalistic line in every way.
Comment by Vlae — June 2, 2006 @ 2:26 pm