Lured by Fox News . . .

Time, the weekly magazine whose parent company also owns CNN, is apparently upset about Glenn Beck.

Upset enough that it wants everyone to know, in a recent article, that he can't write ("he gets alot of help from his staff") and is making money ("the value of his Fox contract is reliably said to be about $2 million per year").

Yet, since CNN and Time are jointly owned, Time should be willing to reveal this fact to its readers.

"Lured by the Fox News Channel from CNN's Headline News channel last year, Beck has lit up the 5 p.m. slot in a way never thought possible by industry watchers, drawing upwards of 3 million viewers on some recent days."

No mention at all about the relationship between Time and CNN in the quoted sentence, or anywhere else in the article.

Doing so might make Time suspect in its muckrakng against Beck. At the very least, this begs the question of conflict of interest. Worse, it appears Time is exercising payback against someone who left the CNN fold and has since trounced CNN in the ratings war.

Despite the way it accuses Beck of stirring up discord, the article leaps out of the Beck-bashing mire to a lofty final sentence designed to show Time is above the fray:

"If the time comes when every audience is screaming, who, in the end, is left to listen?"

Perhaps it's worth a moment of Time to reflect on the magazine's own conflicted screaming.