Conservative columnist dropped after receiving government payments

[Chip R]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...commentator_21

Columnist Dropped Over Payments From Gov't

CHICAGO - A conservative columnist has been dropped by a major syndication service because he accepted a payment from the Bush administration to promote the No Child Left Behind law to fellow blacks and to give the education secretary media time.
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Armstrong Williams, one of the nation's leading black conservative voices, has acknowledged that a company he runs was paid $240,000 by the Education Department, and he called criticism of his relationship with the department "legitimate."
Tribune Media Services said it told Williams on Friday that it was halting distribution of his weekly newspaper column.

The company, a subsidiary of the Tribune Co., said it accepted his explanation that the payment was for advertising on his radio and television programs.

"Nevertheless, accepting compensation in any form from an entity that serves as a subject of his weekly newspaper columns creates, at the very least, the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Under these circumstances, readers may well ask themselves if the views expressed in his columns are his own, or whether they have been purchased by a third party," a statement said.

Williams also hosts a radio show and appears regularly on CNN as a commentator. CNN said it would evaluate the situation, pointing out that Williams has no formal contract with the network.

"We will consider very seriously this issue before booking him as a guest again," said CNN spokeswoman Megan Mahoney.

A contract required Williams' company, the Graham Williams Group, to produce radio and TV spots featuring one-minute "reads" by Education Secretary Rod Paige and to allow Paige and other department officials to appear as studio guests with Williams.
Williams also was to use his influence with other black journalists to get them to discuss No Child Left Behind, a centerpiece of President Bush (news - web sites)'s domestic agenda, which aims to raise achievement among poor and minority children and penalizes many schools that don't make progress.

The National Association of Black Journalists expressed disappointment in Williams, who is not a member of the group.

"I thought we in the media were supposed to be watchdogs, not lapdogs," said NABJ Vice President-Print Bryan Monroe, assistant vice president-news at Knight Ridder. "I thought we had an administration headed by a president who took an oath to uphold the First Amendment, not try to rent it."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Friday that the decisions on the contract were made by the Education Department.

The Education Department defended its decision as a "permissible use of taxpayer funds under legal government contracting procedures." The point was to help parents, particularly in poor and minority communities, understand the benefits of the law, the department said.

The radio show "The Right Side," which Williams both hosts and owns, is carried by the Lynchburg, Va.-based Liberty Channel, which is affiliated with the Rev. Jerry Falwell, by Sky Angel satellite network, a Christian organization, and by Hunt Valley, Md.-based Sinclair Broadcast Group of Hunt Valley, Md.

Messages seeking comment were left Saturday from the Liberty Channel, TV One and Sinclair, but there was no immediate response.

His other show, "On Point" where Williams interviewed Paige last year is carried by TV One, a Silver Spring, Md.-based network aimed at African Americans. The Washington Post quoted Williams as saying he had disclosed his contract to TV One, but said chief executive Johnathon Rodgers told the newspaper the network knew nothing about it and has taken the show off the air while it investigates.
Williams said the criticism was "legitimate."

"Even though I'm not a journalist — I'm a commentator — I feel I should be held to the media ethics standard," he told The Associated Press on Friday. "My judgment was not the best. I wouldn't do it again, and I learned from it."

Information about the contract with Williams was first reported by USA Today, and Williams' Web site, www.armstrongwilliams.com, carried the text of the newspaper's article.

[RBA]

Looks like the Bush Administation has been caught once again using our tax dollars to promote their partisan political agenda. This ain't the first time and there are laws against this. This very well could be the most crooked administration in United States history. But this is what America voted for, so I guess that makes everything okay.

[Chip R]

Looks like the Bush Administation has been caught once again using our tax dollars to promote their partisan political agenda. This ain't the first time and there are laws against this. This very well could be the most crooked administration in United States history. But this is what America voted for, so I guess that makes everything okay.

Are there actually laws against this? If there aren't you can't really blame the Bushies for doing this. Not that it's necessarily an ethical thing to do but they are trying to get their point across. It's really not much different than buying ads to do the same thing. Williams is the person at fault here. If NCLB was such a great thing why did he take the money to shill for it?

As for the Bush administration being the most crooked in US history, I'm no supporter of the Bushies but as far as crookedness goes, it doesn't even hold a candle to the Clinton administration, the Reagan administration or the Nixon administration.

[RBA]

Yes, there are laws against this. I'll find it and post it.

Also over 1350 Americans and counting have died over cooked up intelligence. Clinton and Nixon don't even come close.

Edit: And Reagan

[Chip R]

Also over 1350 Americans and counting have died over cooked up intelligence.

If that's your criteria then it still doesn't hold a candle to LBJ's administration.

Thanks for the articles. I just saw another article where the administration did something similar to the Medicare ads only it was an anti-drug thing. I'll see if I can find that story.

[RBA]

U.S. Politics: Current Events

Money, "News" and Ethics
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January 07, 2005
Money, "News" and Ethics
A little reported news item from May 2004 : The GAO found that the Bush Administration illegally produced "video news releases" touting the Medicare prescription drug bill. The 16-page legal opinion says that the Administration illegally used federal money to produce propaganda and broke a prohibition against unauthorized use of federal funds. Flash forward to January 2005 : USA Today has discoveredthat the Bush Education department paid a TV pundit a quarter of a million dollars to push the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, to interview Education Secretary Rod Paige for TV and radio spots that ran in 2004, and to urge other black journalists to support NCLB.

What do the two have in common? In neither case is there full disclosure for the public. Although TV producers knew the video news releases came from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, "the VNRs did not alert television viewers that CMS was the source of the story package."
Armstrong Williams, called "one of the most recognized conservative voices in America" by the Washington Post, promoted NCLB on his daily TV show on "America's Voice' network. His column appears in the LA Times, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal. At least four of his weekly columns in 2004 explicitly touted NCLB; in another column, close to the election, he endorsed Bush, mentioning, specifically, education policy.

Interestingly, a poll on Armstrong's web site is critical of his role in promoting NCLB: at this writing, 89.41% of those taking the poll believe it was wrong for the feds to pay him to promote the law.

See Armstrong Williams at Townhall ; GAO Decision (19 May 04) ; GovExec.com (20 May 04) ; USA Today (07 Jan 05) ; Washington Post (20 May 04) .

[RBA]

The Bush Administation can buy ads. Yes, out of their own money. Not US Tax dollars for their partisan political agenda.

[RosieRed]

Here's an excerpt from an AP article on this:

Three Democratic senators – Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Harry Reid of Nevada – wrote Bush Friday to demand he recover the money paid to Armstrong. The lawmakers contended that “the act of bribing journalists to bias their news in favor of government policies undermines the integrity of our democracy.”

Rep. George Miller of California, the top Democrat on the House education committee, asked for an inspector general investigation into whether the deal with legal and ethical. The Republican chairman of the committee, Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, supported the request.

Miller and other Democrats also wrote Bush to call for an end to “covert propaganda.”

The department’s contract with Williams, through the public relations firm Ketchum, dates to 2003 and 2004. It follows another recent flap about the agency’s publicity efforts.

The Bush administration has promoted No Child Left Behind with a video that comes across as a news story but fails to make clear the reporter involved was paid with taxpayer money. It has also has paid for rankings of newspaper coverage of the law, with points awarded for stories that say Bush and the Republican Party are strong on education. The Government Accountability Office, Congress’ auditing arm, is investigating those spending decisions.

The GAO has twice ruled that the Bush administration’s use of prepackaged videos – to promote federal drug policy and a new Medicare law – is “covert propaganda” because the videos do not make clear to the public that the government produced the promotional news.

[Chip R]

The GAO has twice ruled that the Bush administration's use of prepackaged videos – to promote federal drug policy and a new Medicare law – is "covert propaganda" because the videos do not make clear to the public that the government produced the promotional news.

Sure. Steal my thunder.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/07/national/07drug.html

Bush's Drug Videos Broke Law, Accountability Office Decides

By JOHN FILES

Published: January 7, 2005

WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 - The Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, said on Thursday that the Bush administration violated federal law by producing and distributing television news segments about the effects of drug use among young people.

The accountability office said the videos "constitute covert propaganda" because the government was not identified as the source of the materials, which were distributed by the Office of National Drug Control Policy. They were broadcast by nearly 300 television stations and reached 22 million households, the office said.
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The accountability office does not have law enforcement powers, but its decisions on federal spending are usually considered authoritative.

In May the office found that the Bush administration had violated the same law by producing television news segments that portrayed the new Medicare law as a boon to the elderly.
The accountability office was not critical of the content of the video segments from the White House drug office, but found that the format - a made-for-television "story package" - violated the prohibition on using taxpayer money for propaganda.
Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, the senior Democrat on the Government Reform Committee, who requested the review, said the use of the mock news segments broke "a fundamental principle of open government."

A spokesman for the drug policy office said the review's conclusions made a "mountain out of a molehill."

The spokesman, Tom Riley, noted that Congress had authorized the drug policy office to fashion antidrug messages in motion pictures and television programming and on the Internet. His office stopped distributing the antidrug videos after the G.A.O. report on the Medicare segments, Mr. Riley said, and never acted unlawfully.

The drug policy office told investigators that it would have been difficult for "a reasonable broadcaster" to mistake the videos for independent news reports.

But the G.A.O. said the drug policy office "made it impossible for the targeted viewing audience to ascertain that these stories were produced by the government."

Federal law prohibits the use of federal money for "publicity or propaganda purposes" not authorized by Congress. The accountability office has found that federal agencies violated this restriction when they distributed editorials and newspaper articles written by government officials without identifying them.

The accountability office said the administration's misuse of federal money "also constitutes a violation of the Antideficiency Act," which prohibits spending in excess of appropriations.

[RosieRed]

Sure. Steal my thunder.

:MandJ: Sorry, I was just trying to help!

[RBA]

IMO, this is just the tip of the ice berg. You know this is SOP. Who else is taking money? Rush, G Gordon, Michael Wiener, Ann Coulter, CNN, MSRNC, Fox News, ABC? He got caught, watch the rest of them plead ignorance.

[Chip R]

IMO, this is just the tip of the ice berg. You know this is SOP. Who else is taking money? Rush, G Gordon, Michael Wiener, Ann Coulter, CNN, MSRNC, Fox News, ABC? He got caught, watch the rest of them plead ignorance.

But it takes two to tango. Williams didn't have to accept that money. He should have known better and he even admits it. I blame the person who took the money more than the person who offered it. We know the person(s) who offered the money is/are corrupt. And this just taints every journalist now much like the NY Times' problems have tainted other newspapers. From now on you see someone on TV or in a newspaper expressing their opinion and you don't know whether or not that opinion was bought and paid for.

[RBA]

From now on you see someone on TV or in a newspaper expressing their opinion and you don't know whether or not that opinion was bought and paid for.

From now on? How about for the last 20 years?

[RosieRed]

But it takes two to tango. Williams didn't have to accept that money. He should have known better and he even admits it. I blame the person who took the money more than the person who offered it. We know the person(s) who offered the money is/are corrupt. And this just taints every journalist now much like the NY Times' problems have tainted other newspapers. From now on you see someone on TV or in a newspaper expressing their opinion and you don't know whether or not that opinion was bought and paid for.

Williams shouldn't have accepted that money, you're right. But this is the GOVERNMENT we're talking about. They never should have been offering him that money in the first place.

I find it much more appalling that the government is pushing propaganda in this manner than I do this columnist accepting money.

[Chip R]

Williams shouldn't have accepted that money, you're right. But this is the GOVERNMENT we're talking about. They never should have been offering him that money in the first place.

I find it much more appalling that the government is pushing propaganda in this manner than I do this columnist accepting money.

But the point of my story was that you should expect the government to do something like that. They are trying to get elected/re-elected any way they can and if paying off a columnist is a way to achieve that goal then they are going to do it. If they lose, nobody cares. If they win, their guy is in office and he can protect you. It's like when gamblers paid off the White Sox in 1919 to throw the Series. Sure it was dirty pool for those gamblers to do that but what do you expect from them? They were criminals, crooks, ne'er-do-wells. They wanted to set things up so that they made money. They could have cared less if the Series was on the level. They wanted to ensure the Reds would win so they could clean up. To them the ends justified the means. Same thing for the Bushies - and probably any other administration.