Categories: OLD Media Moves

Biz media ignore bad news for Minkow

Beth Barrett of LA Weekly has a great story about convicted swindler Barry Minkow, who has been a business media darling twice but is now being ignored when the news has turned bad again.

Barrett writes, “Mark Maremont, a Pulitzer Prize–winning senior editor at The Wall Street Journal, praised Minkow for his fraud-discovery unit and came to rely on him as a source for investigative stories. But after Maremont learned in January that Minkow was once again the subject of SEC scrutiny, he never wrote a word about it.

“In a flattering 2005 profile on 60 Minutes, Minkow detailed how he manipulated the media and even duped Oprah Winfrey. ‘Nobody knew I was a liar and a thief, but I knew,’ Minkow confessed to correspondent Steve Kroft. But several months ago, when 60 Minutes was presented with evidence that Minkow was being deceitful again, producers had no interest in correcting the record.

“Similarly, Fox News has enthusiastically served as one of Minkow’s biggest promoters. Minkow appears regularly on the network as a fraud expert.

“During a recent interview on Your World With Neil Cavuto, the host aired clips from an upcoming movie starring Minkow in his own redemption story and gushed, ‘Now you’re a big movie star. … This movie is going to win an Oscar.'”