Pay-ola Ain't Just for Radio, People

[sspadowsky]

Jumpin' Jesus on a pogo stick. Here's another one to add to the "Outrage List."

Clicky (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/usatoday/20050107/ts_usatoday/whitehousepaidcommentatortopromotelaw)

White House paid commentator to promote law

Fri Jan 7, 6:56 AM ET

Add to My Yahoo! Top Stories - USATODAY.com

By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY

Seeking to build support among black families for its education reform law, the Bush administration paid a prominent black pundit $240,000 to promote the law on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same.

The campaign, part of an effort to promote No Child Left Behind (NCLB), required commentator Armstrong Williams "to regularly comment on NCLB during the course of his broadcasts," and to interview Education Secretary Rod Paige for TV and radio spots that aired during the show in 2004.

Williams said Thursday he understands that critics could find the arrangement unethical, but "I wanted to do it because it's something I believe in."

The top Democrat on the House Education Committee, Rep. George Miller (news, bio, voting record) of California, called the contract "a very questionable use of taxpayers' money" that is "probably illegal." He said he will ask his Republican counterpart to join him in requesting an investigation.

The contract, detailed in documents obtained by USA TODAY through a Freedom of Information Act request, also shows that the Education Department, through the Ketchum public relations firm, arranged with Williams to use contacts with America's Black Forum, a group of black broadcast journalists, "to encourage the producers to periodically address" NCLB. He persuaded radio and TV personality Steve Harvey to invite Paige onto his show twice. Harvey's manager, Rushion McDonald, confirmed the appearances.

Williams said he does not recall disclosing the contract to audiences on the air but told colleagues about it when urging them to promote NCLB.

"I respect Mr. Williams' statement that this is something he believes in," said Bob Steele, a media ethics expert at The Poynter Institute for Media Studies. "But I would suggest that his commitment to that belief is best exercised through his excellent professional work rather than through contractual obligations with outsiders who are, quite clearly, trying to influence content."

The contract may be illegal "because Congress has prohibited propaganda," or any sort of lobbying for programs funded by the government, said Melanie Sloan of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "And it's propaganda."

White House spokesman Trent Duffy said he couldn't comment because the White House is not involved in departments' contracts.

Ketchum referred questions to the Education Department, whose spokesman, John Gibbons, said the contract followed standard government procedures. He said there are no plans to continue with "similar outreach."

Williams' contract was part of a $1 million deal with Ketchum that produced "video news releases" designed to look like news reports. The Bush administration used similar releases last year to promote its Medicare prescription drug plan, prompting a scolding from the Government Accountability Office, which called them an illegal use of taxpayers' dollars.

Williams, 45, a former aide to U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) Justice Clarence Thomas (news - web sites), is one of the top black conservative voices in the nation. He hosts The Right Side on TV and radio, and writes op-ed pieces for newspapers, including USA TODAY, while running a public relations firm, Graham Williams Group.

[Brandon]

I already knew about this sort of thing to some extent, but I wasn't aware money was involved. Richard Clarke -- when he was in the eye of the storm -- once remarked that the White House would often tell conservative commentators what to say, send them talking points, etc.

Certainly lends more credence to the media manipulation conspiracy theories, doesn't it?

[sspadowsky]

See, if it wasn't for that goddamned liberal med.... oh, wait.

[mburbank]

There's nothing wrong with telling them what to say if they're stupid enough to do it. That's called a press release.

If you pay them to do it, that's called a bribe, I'm pretty sure, and it's against the law. What are they saying the payment was for, exactly?

[sspadowsky]

The guy was paid to advocate the No Child Left Behind act, and to encourage other pundits and activists to do so as well.

[Miss Modular]

I already knew about this sort of thing to some extent, but I wasn't aware money was involved. Richard Clarke -- when he was in the eye of the storm -- once remarked that the White House would often tell conservative commentators what to say, send them talking points, etc.

Certainly lends more credence to the media manipulation conspiracy theories, doesn't it?

I hope more stories like the one Sspad reported above come out. On the other hand, it probably wouldn't deflate the problem.

[Cosmo Electrolux]

it doesn't matter.....Americans are so f ucking stupid, that they'll still vote republican..

[VinceZeb]

Will there be this kind of outrage when it's shown that the Democrats do the talking for their so called "voices in the media"?

[sspadowsky]

Links?
Sources?

Try backing up your stance with facts, articles, sources, and the like. It supports your arguments much better than generalizations.

Incidentally, this type of thing is bad no matter who's doing it, and you know it.

By the way, I'm back in town. Wanna go shopping?

[mburbank]

Why do you bother, you sad, pale shadow of your former self?

But, for old times sake;

IF it is ever dicsovered that Democrats paid tax dollars and signed contracts to get pundits to shill for them, then the outrage will be exactly the same. It's not the message I object to, or even the lieing, IDIOT. It's the CRIME.

[Brandon]

Williams wasn't the only one, apparently:

http://www.thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?bid=3&pid=2114

It was a rare moment of talk-show unanimity. On the set of the Fox News Washington bureau, host Tony Snow, fellow guest Linda Chavez (a conservative pundit), and I were slamming Armstrong Williams, a rightwing columnist and talk show host. USA Today had reported--as you probably know--that Williams had been paid nearly a quarter of a million dollars by the Bush administration to promote its No Child Left Behind education bill. And Williams, who supported the legislation in his column and as a cable news talking head, had not bothered to inform his audiences or the folks who book him at CNN, Fox, and MSNBC that he was a shill on the Bush payroll.

Snow was shaking his head at Williams's indiscretion, and Chavez was upset and joked that she had received bupkis from the White House. Prior to going on air, she had complained that ArmstrongGate had caused some people to assume that she and other conservative commentators were also riding this gravy train. Since the story broke on Friday, she said, several people had asked her how much she had received from the Bush administration. She was pissed at Williams for conduct that was raising questions about the whole cadre of rightwing pundits. During our non-debate on Williams, I noted that it was a waste of taxpayer money to pay Williams for supporting the Bush administration, which he seemed quite willing to do for free. And I wondered aloud how this contract had come to be.

After our segment finished, Chavez and I headed to the green room, and there he was: Armstrong Williams. He was waiting to go on air to defend himself. I've known him a long time; we've often sparred, in friendly fashion, on these shouting-head shows. I shook my head and said, "Armstrong, Armstrong, Armstrong...." He was quick with his main talking point: "It was bad judgment, Dave. Bad judgment." His phone rang. He answered it, said hello, and then told the person on the other end, "It was bad judgment. You know, just bad judgment." I was reminded that in addition to being a pundit, Williams, a leading African-American conservative and Clarence Thomas protégé, is a PR specialist with his own firm. Not too long ago, Michael Jackson called him for advice. Now he had himself for a client, and, heeding conventional crisis-management strategy, he was practicing strict message discipline: bad judgment, bad judgment, bad judgment.

As we chatted, Chavez politely expressed her anger at Williams. This scandal, she noted, would provide ammunition to those who dismiss minority conservatives as race sellouts who have been bought off by the Republicans. (She is Mexican-American.) Williams absorbed her point, acting contrite.

I asked if Williams had yet been contacted by the inspector general at the Education Department, the agency that had awarded the contract that supplied him $241,000 for promoting the NCLB measure within the African-American community. Representative George Miller, the ranking Democrat on the education committee, and other House Democrats had already called for an investigation. Why should the IG contact me? Williams replied, noting he had been merely a subcontractor. Any thorough investigation, I remarked, would include questioning the subcontractor. He scratched his head. "Funny," he said. "I thought this [contract] was a blessing at the time."

And then Williams violated a PR rule: he got off-point. "This happens all the time," he told me. "There are others." Really? I said. Other conservative commentators accept money from the Bush administration? I asked Williams for names. "I'm not going to defend myself that way," he said. The issue right now, he explained, was his own mistake. Well, I said, what if I call you up in a few weeks, after this blows over, and then ask you? No, he said.

Does Williams really know something about other rightwing pundits? Or was he only trying to minimize his own screw-up with a momentary embrace of a trumped-up everybody-does-it defense? I could not tell. But if the IG at the Department of Education or any other official questions Williams, I suggest he or she ask what Williams meant by this comment. And if Williams is really sorry for this act of "bad judgment" and for besmirching the profession of rightwing punditry, shouldn't he do what he can to guarantee that those who watch pundits on the cable news networks and read political columnists receive conservative views that are independent and untainted by payoffs from the Bush administration or other political outfits?

Armstrong, please, help us all protect the independence of the conservative commentariat. If you are not alone, tell us who else has yielded to bad judgment.

[sspadowsky]

The scandal grows...... as if this fucking administration hasn't already given us enough reason to riot in the streets......
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.suntimes.com/output/marin/cst-edt-carol28.html

No U.S. accountability in propaganda scandals

January 28, 2005

BY CAROL MARIN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
Advertisement


My friend, Kris Kridel, anchors the "Noon Business Hour" on NewsRadio 780. I listen whenever I can, partly because she's my friend and partly because I usually learn something.

When Kris interviews financial analysts or brokers who tout one stock or bond over another, she regularly asks this question: "Do you or does your firm have any positions in these investments?"

In other words, are you saying what you're saying because it's true? Or because you're being paid to make a pitch?

We have now reached the sorry state of journalism where the question needs to be turned on the questioner.

There is a new scandal in our midst, and it appears to be growing.

Earlier this month, USA Today broke the story of Armstrong Williams, a syndicated columnist, radio commentator and CNN and CNBC talking head who quietly was paid $240,000 of your and my tax dollars by the U.S. Education Department. He earned that money by shilling for President Bush's controversial No Child Left Behind initiative.

We weren't supposed to know about that little deal. The money was funneled through Ketchum PR, the same folks that brought us Karen Ryan last year. Remember her? She was the "reporter" who really wasn't, appearing in "news reports" that really weren't. They were video news releases sent off to television stations across the country touting the Medicare prescription drug bill. That was the bill in which the administration lied to Congress and the public about the price tag, saying it would cost a mere $395 billion, when the government's own internal analyst had concluded it would cost much, much more, $551 billion. None of that was revealed until after the bill had passed.

Now, this week, one more revelation courtesy of the Washington Post, which reported Wednesday that syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher, a big supporter of another Bush program, the "Healthy Marriage" initiative, was also quietly picking up government checks. Gallagher got $21,500 from the Department of Health and Human Services and another $20,000 from the Justice Department, according to the Post.

Both Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher have said they're sorry if it looks like they are journalistic sellouts. They assure us they really are not.

And the administration? What does it say? Well, which time?

When the Karen-Ryan-Is-Not-A-Real-Reporter story first broke in early 2004, the administration claimed it was an "isolated case."

That isolated case has now multiplied.

The president this week said, "We didn't know about this at the White House."

Funny, the Government Accountability Office did. The GAO, according to published reports, has at least two investigations under way dating to last year. And it has already ruled that this kind of "covert propaganda" is illegal.

There's a name for it.

Payola.

It used to apply, says former FCC Chairman Newton Minow, to radio stations taking money under the table to promote music by record companies. That was bad enough, he says, "but when you have the government involved it's worse because you're fooling or misleading the public that's paying them to represent them."

This is a critical time in this country when it comes to news.

Yes, there have been scandals, including the recent ones involving the New York Times and reporter Jayson Blair. And the debacle over at CBS with Dan Rather.

But as bad as they were, there was disclosure and there were consequences. Heads rolled.

What about the government?

We have not had disclosure in the matter of this taxpayer-provided propaganda. Who approved it? Who ordered it? Since it's illegal, who's been charged?

I can answer that last one.

No one.

Yet at this very moment, Chicago's own U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, in the name of national security, is doing all he can with the approval of the Bush administration to force reporters to reveal their sources and compromise the confidentiality on which their reporting depends or go to jail.

Ironically, at the same time, the U.S. president is claiming that there needs to be a "nice, independent relationship between the White House and the press, the administration and the press."

I agree with the president.

The urgent issues facing this country and the world require that we in journalism do much more than we have ever done to clean up the mess in our own profession and at the same time not cower in fear when it comes to confronting the unconscionable ways this administration has tried to pervert our work.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Well, to be fair, one of the grants Maggie Gallagher received through this "fathers" or whatever group was during the end of the Clinton administration. Her situation is slightly different, although as we discussed in the other thread about this, a commission put together by Democrats in Congress found that just this last year there were supposedly $88 million worth in contracts of this nature. The GAO, the FCC, and I guess some others are investigating, so we'll see.

Bush says he knew nothing about this, and he has also condemned the practice. If it's something that has just sort of been going on under the radar throughout administrations, then it needs to stop immediately, and depending on the severity, perhaps some indictments need to get thrown out there.

[Miss Modular]

There's a third columnist that's been paid!

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=536&u=/ap/20050128/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/bush_paid_columnists_1&printer=1

Third Columnist Was Paid by Bush Agency

Fri Jan 28, 6:03 PM ET

By SIOBHAN McDONOUGH, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The Department of Health and Human Services (news - web sites) said Friday that a third conservative columnist was paid to assist in promoting a Bush administration policy.



Columnist Mike McManus received $10,000 to train marriage counselors as part of the agency's initiative promoting marriage to build strong families, said Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families.


The disclosure came as the Government Accountability Office sent a letter to the Education Department on Friday asking for all materials related to its contract dealings with a prominent conservative media commentator.


That department, through a contract with the public relations firm Ketchum, hired commentator Armstrong Williams to produce ads that featured former Education Secretary Rod Paige and promoted President Bush (news - web sites)'s No Child Left Behind law. The contract also committed Williams, who is black, to provide media access for Paige and to persuade other black journalists to talk about the law.


Federal law bans the use of public money on propaganda.


The Education Department received the GAO's letter and is reviewing it, said department spokeswoman Susan Aspey. "Secretary Spelling has made it very clear she is getting to the bottom of this."


Margaret Spellings started this week, replacing Paige.


In a letter to Sens. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, dated Friday, Spellings wrote, "At this point, what I can say is that at a minimum, there were errors of judgments at the Department, and I am diligently working to get to the bottom of it all."


The lawmakers are the chairman and the ranking member of a panel that oversees education spending, and their subcommittee is looking into the matter.


Spellings also said the department has directed Ketchum to stop all work under the contract.


Earlier this week, Bush ordered his Cabinet secretaries not to hire columnists to promote administration agendas. The declaration was prompted by reports that Williams and another columnist, Maggie Gallagher, had been paid by the administration.


All three columnists failed to disclose to their readers their relationships with the administration.


Health and Human Services (news - web sites)' Horn stressed McManus was not paid to write favorably to about the administration. Still, he said, HHS has now implemented a rule to prohibit the use of outside consultants or contractors who have any connection with the press.


"There's a growing misperception that taxpayers' money is being used to pay columnists to use their position in the media to portray the administration in a positive light," Horn said. "I felt a compelling need to draw a bright line in order to restore the public's confidence that we are not doing that."


McManus was hired by the Lewin Group, which had a contract with HHS to support community-based programs. As co-founder and president of the nonprofit group Marriage Savers, his expertise was applied to help the community-based programs to build "the capacity to develop healthy marriage initiatives," Horn said.


The Institute for Youth Development, which got a grant from HHS, also is paying Marriage Savers $49,000 to offer guidance to unmarried couples who are having children, Horn said.


McManus has written supportively about the HHS marriage initiative in many of his columns since the consulting work began in January 2003.


McManus' weekly column appears in about 50 newspapers. He would not comment Friday but said he planned to issue a statement.

HHS spokesman Bill Pierce said he was unaware of any other columnists or commentators who were being paid to do work for the department.

Determining who is considered a journalist isn't always easy, Horn said.

"Oftentimes they will be experts in an area, write op-eds, be a media personality, write columns," he said. "The question really is: Is it legitimate for the government to draw upon that?"

Gallagher apologized this week to readers for not disclosing a $21,500 contract with HHS to help create materials promoting the marriage initiative.

The Education Department paid Williams $240,000 to produce television and radio ads promoting the No Child Left Behind Act. Williams has apologized and called it a mistake in judgment not to disclose that the administration was paying him.

Sens. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., had requested the GAO to expand a continuing inquiry into the matter.

"The issue here isn't just whether a journalist violated ethics, but whether the Bush Administration broke the law," Lautenberg said Friday. "If the GAO finds that the payment to Armstrong Williams was an illegal use of taxpayer dollars, then the money should be returned and Education Department officials should be held accountable."

USA Today first reported the McManus contract Friday.

[mburbank]

I bet it stops at three though. I bet it was just three bad apple type contracts, and it isn't a widespread phenomena at all. And I bet the balme falls entirely on, like some interns who gave out contracts and it wasn't a policy and no one important knew about it. Oh, and I think I smell some more medals of freedom warming in the oven, too.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Yeah, this instance seems to be more like the Maggie Gallagher scenario, and less like the Armstrong Williams one.

I saw Williams on Hannity & Colmes last night, and I have to say, I felt sort of bad for the guy. One, he has an uncontrable blinking thing going on, but I digress.....anyway, he seemed really sincere, and although I disagree with him on stuff like vouchers, you can tell he genuinely cares about education reform.

One columnist pointed out a few weeks ago that that is probably the worst thing about the Williams scandal. Here's a guy who probably agrees with most of NCLB anyway, yet he still took the cash.

[sspadowsky]

Variation, same theme: Check it (http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/02/02/white_house_friendly_reporter_under_scrutiny/)

White House-friendly reporter under scrutiny

By Charlie Savage and Alan Wirzbicki, Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent | February 2, 2005

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has provided White House media credentials to a man who has virtually no journalistic background, asks softball questions to the president and his spokesman in the midst of contentious news conferences, and routinely reprints long passages verbatim from official press releases as original news articles on his website.

Jeff Gannon calls himself the White House correspondent for TalonNews.com, a website that says it is "committed to delivering accurate, unbiased news coverage to our readers." It is operated by a Texas-based Republican Party delegate and political activist who also runs GOPUSA.com, a website that touts itself as "bringing the conservative message to America."

Called on last week by President Bush at a press conference, Gannon attacked Democratic Senate leaders and called them "divorced from reality." During the presidential campaign, when called on by Press Secretary Scott McClellan, Gannon linked Senator John F. Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, to Jane Fonda and questioned why anyone would dispute Bush's National Guard service.

Now, the question of how Gannon gets into White House press conferences is coming under intense scrutiny from critics who contend that Gannon is not a journalist but rather a White House tool to soften media coverage of Bush. The issue was raised by a media watchdog group and picked up by Internet bloggers, who linked Gannon's presence in White House briefings to recent controversies over whether the administration manipulates the flow of information to the public.

These include the disclosure that the Education Department secretly paid columnist Armstrong Williams to promote its education policy and the administration's practice of sending out video press releases about its policies that purport to be "news stories" by fake journalists.

McClellan said Gannon has not been issued -- nor requested -- a regular "hard pass" to the White House, and instead has come in for the past two years on daily passes. Daily passes, he said, may be issued to anyone who writes for an organization that publishes regularly and who is cleared to enter the building.

He said other reporters and political commentators from lesser-known newsletters and from across the political spectrum also attend briefings, though he could not recall any Internet bloggers. McClellan said it is not the White House's role to decide who is and who is not a real journalist and dismissed any notion of conspiracy.

Nonetheless, transcripts of White House briefings indicate that McClellan often calls on Gannon and that the press secretary -- and the president -- have found relief in a question from Gannon after critical lines of questioning from mainstream news organizations.

When Bush called on Gannon near the end of his nationally televised Jan. 26 news conference, he had just been questioned about Williams and the Education Department funds, an embarrassment to the administration. Gannon's question was different.

"Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture of the US economy," Gannon said. "[Minority Leader] Harry Reid was talking about soup lines, and Hillary Clinton was talking about the economy being on the verge of collapse. Yet, in the same breath, they say that Social Security is rock solid and there's no crisis there. How are you going to work -- you said you're going to reach out to these people -- how are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?"

As it turned out, Reid had never talked about soup lines. That was a phrase attributed to him in satire by Rush Limbaugh on his radio show.

Last year, during the presidential campaign, Gannon's comments could be even more pointed. In a Feb. 10, 2004, briefing with McClellan, for example, Gannon rose to deliver the following:

"Since there have been so many questions about what the president was doing over 30 years ago, what is it that he did after his honorable discharge from the National Guard? Did he make speeches alongside Jane Fonda, denouncing America's racist war in Vietnam? Did he testify before Congress that American troops committed war crimes in Vietnam? And did he throw somebody else's medals at the White House to protest a war America was still fighting?"

David Brock, the former investigative journalist who made his name revealing aspects of former President Bill Clinton's extramarital affairs, said he was watching last week's press conference on television and the "soup lines" question sparked his interest because it "struck me as so extremely biased." Brock asked his media watchdog group, Media Matters for America, to look into Talon News.

It quickly discovered two things, he said. First, both Talon and the political organization GOP USA were run by a Texas Republican activist and party delegate named Bobby Eberle. Second, many of the reports Gannon filed for Talon News "appeared to be lifted verbatim from various White House and Republican political committee documents."

Eberle did not return phone calls yesterday, and Gannon declined to comment. He did reply to Brock's group on his personal blog: "In many cases I have liberally used the verbiage provided on key aspects of the issue because it is the precise expression of where the White House stands -- free of any 'spin.' It's the ultimate in journalistic honesty -- unvarnished and unfiltered. If only others would be as forthcoming."

[KevinTheOmnivore]

McClellan said Gannon has not been issued -- nor requested -- a regular "hard pass" to the White House, and instead has come in for the past two years on daily passes. Daily passes, he said, may be issued to anyone who writes for an organization that publishes regularly and who is cleared to enter the building.

He said other reporters and political commentators from lesser-known newsletters and from across the political spectrum also attend briefings, though he could not recall any Internet bloggers. McClellan said it is not the White House's role to decide who is and who is not a real journalist and dismissed any notion of conspiracy.

Nonetheless, transcripts of White House briefings indicate that McClellan often calls on Gannon and that the press secretary -- and the president -- have found relief in a question from Gannon after critical lines of questioning from mainstream news organizations.

Eh, what are you going to do? Technically speaking, to my knowledge, there's nothing mandating that the president even hold these press briefings. This president certainly doesn't seem fond of them.

It's at least good that this jackass is getting exposed. Maybe the rest of the press will dig into Bush and/or McClellan for taking on this guy's soft balls. The worst part is that this chump has gotten by this long, citing GOP press releases and 2nd rate blogger rants (as well as Rush Limbaugh).