Medialink Worldwide [3], the largest producer of video news releases [4] and audio news releases [5], may be crashing and burning with the market downturn [6] but the company's President, CEO and Chairman, Larry Moskowitz [7], has a nice golden parachute in reserve. In fact, the generous termination provisions of Moskowitz's employment agreement may give pause to companies casting their eyes in Medialink's direction, pondering purchase of the fake news titan.

A Medialink report [8], filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission [9] last week, states that in the event of the company being taken over and its CEO dumped, he would be entitled under his December 2005 employment agreement to a payment of over three times his $444,000 base salary.

A payout of $1.3 million may not seem too remarkable, compared to Wall Street executives' sweet severance deals from companies with billions of dollars in revenue. But Medialink isn't AIG [10]. Between January 2006 and now, the company's revenue has dropped -- in part due to a string of asset sales -- from over $36 million to $19.6 million. Not surprisingly, the company's share price has plummeted [11] over the same period from $3.48 to just over 11 cents.

The "news" that Medialink produces for cash-strapped newsrooms may be fake, but Larry Moskowitz's golden parachute is very real.