News Corp.: "News Corp. Book Contracts Aren't Donations Unless We Give Them To Democrats Who Don't Like Us"
Ever since it awarded a $4.5 million book deal to then-Speaker Newt Gingrich while Congress was preparing to address issues of media ownership, News Corp. has vigorously denied that any publishing arrangements it makes with influential political figures (Republican Senators Lott, Specter, Hegel, and Hutchison; Supreme Court Justice Thomas) are some kind of favor-buying ploy or campaign donation. So it was sort of weird to see this in the Post, News Corp.'s sister paper to the Wall Street Journal, today!
John Edwards, who yesterday demanded Democratic candidates return any campaign donations from Rupert Murdoch and News Corp., himself earned at least $800,000 for a book published by one of the media mogul's companies.
The Edwards campaign said the multimillionaire trial lawyer would not return the hefty payout from Murdoch for the book titled "Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives."
The campaign didn't respond to a question from The Post about whether it was hypocritical for Edwards to take money from News Corp. while calling for other candidates not to.
Well, there's hypocrisy going on somewhere, that's for sure. Journal employees, take note: This is how you smear one of your new overlord's harshest critics. Get on it.
