Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) and many tech companies regularly promise to give reporters a sneak peak at their newest products features provided that they keep their mouths shut for a designated period of time. It's called an "embargo" and it's gotten way out of hand.

Embargos often are found on a slow Monday morning. The Yahoo announcement today that it will allow users of its email service send free text messages to mobile phones is a case in point. Reporters from AP, Reuters , and USA Today each appear to have gobbled up the press release that Yahoo's flacks spoon fed them Sunday without a glimmer of skepticism. None mentioned the deal they struck to get access to the news.

Sunday is the favorite day for embargos. Odds are that reporters will do what the companies want since their sources who might point out that this announcement isn't a big deal aren't in the office. Companies also pre-brief friendly analysts that will help them spread their message. The same idea works in mergers and acquisitions. This is how "Merger Mondays" got started. No one can manipulate the market when it's closed on Sunday. Big medical journals release research using embargos as well as well.

I don't mean to pick on Yahoo!'s announcement today. For all I know, this could be the biggest thing since sliced bread, but I doubt it. In today's media age, embargoes are becoming increasingly stupid. I can't tell you how many times I honored embargoes only to see a post on a blog about a "a big announcement coming", promising more details to come once the news was "officially" released.

Reporters -- me included -- honor these embargoes because they are worried that companies won't leak them the big news if they don't write about little things. The flacks and the journalists scratch each other's backs and the reader winds up the loser.

I don't blame Paris Hilton and her family for trying to sell their story.

After all, why should multinational conglomerates be the only ones who get rich off her misfortune? Why shouldn't the supposedly stupid blond heiress get a piece of the action?

Brian Montopoli wonders on CBS Corp's (NYSE: CBS) PublicEye blog whether paying for an interview with Hilton would be the worst thing in the world.

"Why don't they just pay for these interviews and then disclose that they've done so to their audience? " he writes. "Wouldn't that ultimately be more journalistically honest -- and even, on this skewed scale, more ethical."

Good point.

CBS Corp. (NYSE: CBS) has its hands full with sinning talent.

The Washington Post Co.'s (NYSE: WPO) Newsweek reports that CBS Evening News anchor, Katie Couric -- who is dating a 33-year-old cougar -- plagiarized in her Notebook segment from a story by Dow Jones & Co.'s (NYSE: DJ) Wall Street Journal [subscription required] reporter Jeffrey Zaslow's March 15th Moving On column. Newsweek alleges that Couric's segment on the decline of libraries copied Zaslow's article in nine places. In response, CBS fired the Notebook segment producer.

And earlier in the week, Don Imus, whose radio program is carried by CBS Radio, suspended his show for two weeks after his comments on the Rutgers women's basketball team. So far Imus's remarks have cost his show two advertisers -- Procter & Gamble Co. (NYSE: PG) and Staples, Inc. (NASDAQ: SPLS). If enough cancellations follow his show will be dropped altogether.

I don't watch any CBS programming and I would avoid CBS stock. With a P/E of 17.5 and earnings expected to grow 13% in 2008 to $2.00, CBS trades at a Price/Earnings to Growth (PEG) ratio of 1.35. This seems expensive for a company whose $14.3 billion in sales have shrunk at a five year compound annual rate of -9.2% and whose net profit margin of 10.3% trails the industry average by three percentage points.

My view: skip Couric, Imus, and CBS stock.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates, a management consulting and venture capital firm. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in CBS, Dow Jones, Procter & Gamble, Staples or Washington Post securities.