posted                   

quote:

---

WASHINGTON — Revelations that the Bush administration paid pundit Armstrong Williams $240,000 to promote its education policies to black audiences drew a quick rebuke from lawmakers on Capitol Hill yesterday and prompted Tribune Media Services to cut its ties with the syndicated commentator.

***

The Education Department yesterday 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 No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the department said. The law, a centerpiece of President Bush's domestic agenda, aims to raise achievement among poor and minority children, with penalties for many schools that don't make progress.

The department's arrangement with Williams required him "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.

The contract 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.

The administration's arrangement with Williams was first reported by USA TODAY based on documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Williams yesterday called criticism of his relationship with the department "legitimate."

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

---

Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                   

quote:

---

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.

---

Posts: 9871 | Registered: Aug 2001  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                   

quote:

---

The thread never happened. You were mistaken. It was actually a reflection of the dogstar, Sirius. A common misconception in government threads.

---

Won't work for me, Chris. And that goes for the one waving the neurolizer around too.

I created the thread, and I'll remember it even if everyone else forgets. Sheesh.

Watched the news shows this morning and Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation closed his show with a rant about the situation. Like me, he suggested that Bush should be firing those at the Dept. of Ed. responsible for this. He also expressed disgust that no one at the White House would comment on it, directing all questions to the Department of Education. I once watched an interview with Schieffer in which he came across as a fairly conservative guy - certainly not a "liberal."

The discussed it a little on "Meet the Press" today and Al Hunt was a guest. Turns out he works out in the same gym as Armstrong Williams. He smiled, but said that Williams certainly was on the job at the gym, urging Hunt to cover the "No Child Left Behind Act" more than once.

Hunt also predicted a flood of FOIA requests, since there's a strong possibility Willimams isn't the only commentator on the govt. payroll.

Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                   

quote:

---

MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn back home. This was a jolting issue in USA Today newspaper on Friday, that, "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...required commentator Armstrong Williams `to regularly comment on NCLB [No Child Left Behind] 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."

Senators led by Democratic leader Harry Reid have written the president, Albert Hunt, to say that Mr. Williams should give the money back, that this was a violation against the law of blatant government propaganda.

MR. HUNT: Well, I don't know what the law is. It strikes me that it's not a very good use of taxpayers' money. It's certainly as egregious a journalist violation as one could engage in. Mr. Williams' column was yanked, as it should be. I will say this. Armstrong did deliver his promise, because I occasionally worked out at a gym and Armstrong's there, and he told me several times, you know, "Why don't you write about No Child Left Behind." I don't know if I'm going to be on one of those government expense accounts or not but...

MR. RUSSERT: How many columns did you do?

MR. HUNT: I didn't do any. So I let him down. I'm sorry, Armstrong. Listen, I'll tell you this. I'll bet that there will be a great market for FOIR, Freedom of Information Requests, in the next couple weeks because I suspect Armstrong Williams is not alone. There have been other people who've been doing this.

MS. MITCHELL: In fact, the Census Bureau has done this. The Department of Health and Human Services has done this in the past on Medicare and other issues. So they have gone to not just to journalists, but they have put out fake news releases...

MR. RUSSERT: Video news releases.

MS. MITCHELL: ...video news releases that are misleading to the average person who believes that they are news reports. And I think that the lines are so blurred. We have to also take a step back and ask, you know, "When did the lines become confusing to people, between what a real journalist is and commentary, analysis or political figures being used as commentators?" I mean, that's really the issue because with all due respect to Mr. Williams, he didn't rise through the normal track of journalism and...

MR. RUSSERT: Byron York, how do we do this? How do people know the difference between journalists, commentators, pundit, who's on the take from the government and who is not? This is very confusing.

MR. YORK: Well--but actually the core issue is really very simple, which is disclosure. You've always got to disclose. And, of course, if Armstrong Williams had done that, it would have destroyed his credibility as it did when he came out. But, you know, The New York Times actually quoted the head of Medialink which is the company that does a lot of these video news releases, saying, you know, "The Clinton administration did more of this." This is something that's been going on for quite a while. And you can argue back and forth whether it's an appropriate expenditure of taxpayer funds, but the key question with the video news releases is you've got to know in the actual product, in this story, this was something produced and paid for by the government. If they do that, that's fine. And if Armstrong Williams had said that ahead of time, then we would have viewed him as a PR man, but on the other hand, it wouldn't have been a scandal.

MR. RUSSERT: These are pseudonews releases where you have a fake journalist sitting there interviewing a Cabinet secretary and materials are sent out across the country. What serious or legitimate news organization would ever air something like that?

MR. YORK: Well, obviously, the networks don't do it, but they are aired on smaller stations or on very small cable outlets. So some of the stuff is just kind of yanked off the satellite and put on the air. So given that that happens, that's why a disclosure is so important.

MR. RUSSERT: Katty.

MS. KAY: And one of these apparently aired on about 200 cable channels. So a lot of people are seeing this, and understandably, after Mr. Williams' story, people are going to look at what they see on television and ask themselves, "How do I know that this reporter isn't being paid either by a government organization or by a business organization?" And that confusion is understandable, particularly since there has been an erosion of the lines of what is clear, objective news reporting.

We've seen the encroachment of entertainment into that field and also the encroachment of business and government interests paying for time in that field, and there does have to be a clarity here. The audiences need to know: Am I getting news, which is objective fact, which is being reported, or am I getting advertising or propaganda, which is being paid for by a government interest or a business interest, or am I getting entertainment, somebody's opinion? And it's not always very clear, and it should be clearer.

MR. YORK: You know, No Child Left Behind--a lot of conservatives hated it; a lot of Democrats hated it. The only way you could get somebody to say something nice about it is pay them $240,000.

MR. HUNT: Well, and they did it, of course, in a very sneaky way. It was funneled through a PR firm, Ketchum PR firm, so they knew exactly what they...

MS. MITCHELL: It was laundered.

MR. HUNT: Yeah. They knew exactly what they were doing. I want to go to Katty's point, because I think it's a very good one. I think the danger for people in our business is we better think carefully about exactly what we're doing. I think there ought to be full disclosure of people of any kind of outside income and--otherwise, I think our business is really going to suffer a tremendous erosion of credibility.

MS. MITCHELL: Well, we've already lost a lot of credibility. This has not exactly been a good couple of years...

MR. HUNT: It's not.

MS. MITCHELL: ...for either print or television credibility.

MR. HUNT: It has not.

---

Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                   

quote:

---

no clue what happened to the thread -- never saw it.

---

I was thinking that was probably the case. Usually, it's pretty easy to figure out why - on those fairly rare occasions - threads get deleted by mods.

The good news is that the forum still makes as much sense as it ever did to me.

The bad news is that there is probably something strange going on in the wiring of my computer or my brain.

Something new, I mean.

[ January 09, 2005, 05:20 PM: Message edited by: sndrake ]

Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                  

quote:

---

the term "laundered" was used today on "Meet the Press.":

---

Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                  

quote:

---

no clue what happened to the thread -- never saw it.

---

Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003  |  IP: Logged |