The WSJ has a fairly shocking story about two books that just came out on Clear Channel. The first, by Alec Foege, you might remember from the extended interview Hitsville did with him on the book’s release a month or two back. Foege is a longtime reporter on the music industry and the author of several other books.

That exchange is here.

The other was written by Reed Bunzel, a onetime radio trade journalist. But there’s more to the story; let’s let the Journal’s Sarah McBride tell it:

In 2005, radio-giant Clear Channel Communications Inc. learned that a writer named Alec Foege was planning a book about it. The book’s working title, “The Monster That Ate Mass Media,” suggested something less than a puff piece was in the works.

Clear Channel mounted a counteroffensive, lining up its own writer to tell the Clear Channel story its way.

As a result, dueling books about Clear Channel have recently hit the shelves. Mr. Foege’s book—now titled “Right of the Dial: The Rise of Clear Channel and the Fall of Commercial Radio”—chronicles the company’s role in the consolidation of the radio industry.

It competes with “Clear Vision: The Story of Clear Channel Communications,” by Reed Bunzel, former editor of the trade magazine Radio Ink. Mr. Bunzel says Clear Channel paid him to do the book but declines to say how much. Another journalist says he was offered more than $100,000 to take on the project. The book doesn’t disclose Mr. Bunzel’s financial relationship with Clear Channel, but careful readers may notice that the company holds the copyright to the book.

Allow me to make a few observations McBride is too polite to. One, this is strong evidence that Clear Channel remains a thuggish company that utilizes dirty tricks and subterfuge to get what it wants.

And two, Reed Bunzel is …. wait, what do you call someone who provides certain intimate service for money but who doesn’t reveal it to his readers? What’s the term I’m looking for?

a) A journalistic whore?

b) A sellout, lying, corporate toady?

c) A fake author, a cheat, and a sleazebag?

d) all of the above?