Free Republic

A journalistic scandal involving payment of thousands of dollars has received massive attention in the mainstream media. One concerning the exchange of 30 pieces of silver has not, so far. In January and early February, four American journalists came under fire to various degrees, as indicated by the number of Lexis-Nexis mentions during the month beginning Jan. 8: Armstrong Williams, 1,133; Maggie Gallagher, 238; Michael McManus, 43; Eason Jordan, 12. Let's start with conservative columnist Williams, who found himself in trouble after news reports revealed he quietly took $241,000 from the U.S. Department of Education to promote its policies on...

I'm herewith resigning as a member of the liberal media elite. I'm joining up with the conservative media elite. They get paid better. First comes news that Armstrong Williams got nearly a quarter of a million from the Education Department to plug No Child Left Behind. The families of soldiers killed in Iraq get a paltry $12,000. But good publicity? Priceless.

NEW YORK Maggie Gallagher released a statement this afternoon taking issue with aspects of the Washington Post article by Howard Kurtz that today broke the news that she received $21,500 from the Department of Health and Human Services for marriage-themed writing projects. She called one of the Kurtz passages "completely false." Kurtz, after being contacted by E&P, read a rebuttal statement over the phone, in which he said she was attempting to "blame the messenger." Here are Gallagher's comments, followed by Kurtz': "On January 26, 2005, Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post wrote that I 'had a $21,500 contract with...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. WASHINGTON - President Bush on Wednesday ordered his Cabinet secretaries not to hire columnists to promote their agendas after disclosure that a second writer was paid to tout an administration initiative. The president said he expects his agency heads will "make sure that that practice doesn't go forward." "All our Cabinet secretaries must realize that we will not be paying commentators to advance our agenda. Our agenda ought to be able to stand on its own two feet," Bush said at a news conference. Bush's remarks came a day after syndicated...

The fact is, I run a small business. I am CEO and manage the syndication and advertising for my television show. In between juggling my commentaries and media appearances, I stepped over the line. This has never happened before. In fact, my company has never worked on a government contract. Nor have we ever received compensation for an issue that I subsequently reported on. This will never happen again. I now realize that I have to create inseparable boundaries between my role as a small businessman and my role as an independent commentator.

Lee P Butler It did not help the Conservative cause one iota for Armstrong Williams to have accepted a monetary fee for advertising the benefits of the No Child Left Behind program created early in the Bush administration and implemented by the Department of Education. In his own words he acknowledged that fact by saying, "I understand that I exercised bad judgment in running paid advertising for an issue that I frequently write about in my column." He further explained that, "People must be able to trust that my commentary is unbiased. Please know that I supported school vouchers long...

Armstrong Williams' poor judgment in not revealing being compensated by the Department of Education to promote No Child Left Behind is unfortunate. With his stepping into the line of fire and acknowledging his errors, we'll be able to get this behind us and move on. What impact, if any, will this incident have on the ongoing credibility of black conservatism? Liberals, particularly black liberals, will claim this incident simply confirms what they have known all along. For them, black conservatives by definition are individuals on the make and on the take. In their view, liberalism is coded into black DNA....

When I was a boy, I took one of my first newspaper jobs in the back of the press room, standing next to a rotary letterpress of the general size and aspect of a steam locomotive, where I "stuffed papers." That is, I assembled one section of the paper inside another. Heavy, inky work for a whole crew of us junior high schoolers and part-timing moms. And we all got a stern warning the first day. "You can't call any want ads before the paper comes out to the general public. You do it, we catch you, you're fired," Wayne,...

I WANT to express my deep sense of outrage at the fact that conservative pundit Arm strong Williams received $240,000 from the Department of Education to support Bush administration policy — and even greater outrage at Williams' claim that he is not the only conservative pundit to have gotten such remuneration. These two shocking bits of information raise a very important question: Hey, what about me?I'm generally very supportive of administration policy, and I write for the only newspaper in the country whose circulation is growing by leaps and bounds. Where's my check?

Propaganda and Pandora's Box January 8, 2005 by John J. Abele The name Quisling became synonymous with "traitor" in the late 1930s. About the same time, the name Joseph Goebels became synonymous with "propaganda". He was the minister of propaganda for the Nazi government of Adolph Hitler and spread the wild stories of German racial superiority and ultimate victory in World War II. Generally propaganda is "any systematic, widespread, deliberateindoctrination, now used as deception or distortion." Joseph Goebels certainly did all of that. The American people generally want to believe that they are morally above such deceptive activities and that...

The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission ordered an investigation Friday into whether conservative commentator Armstrong Williams broke the law by failing to disclose he was paid by the Bush administration to plug the president's education agenda. The investigation relates to provisions that require disclosure of such arrangements, FCC Chairman Michael Powell said in a brief statement. Also Friday, two Democratic senators asked the Government Accountability Office, Congress' investigative arm, to review whether any other federal agencies have paid commentators to support the administration's agenda. Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate...

In a deal reminiscent of Armstrong Williams' arrangement with Bush administration, Howard Dean's presidential campaign has admitted it paid two pro-Democrat Internet bloggers to keep them from supporting other candidates. The two bloggers hired by the former Vermont governor were Jerome Armstrong, who publishes the blog MyDD, and Markos Zuniga, who publishes the popular DailyKos, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. They were paid $3,000 a month for four months. During the presidential campaign, the DailyKos received as many as one million hits daily. The deal was first revealed earlier this week by Zephyr Teachout, the former head of...

Liberal interest groups will rue the day the Williams scandal broke to expose the extent of their work as paid government propagandists. Thanks to the maneuverings of a single (formerly) syndicated columnist, the public is finally learning what a short road it is from Yes Man to Yes, I'll Take a Check, Man. It's a lesson being reinforced hour by hour as Armstrong Williams appears on one television program after another issuing mea culpas for taking almost a quarter of a million dollars to help hawk the Bush Administration's No Child Left Behind legislation -- and, yet, steadfastly refusing to...

WASHINGTON (AP) - A member of the Federal Communications Commission said Thursday the agency should investigate whether conservative commentator Armstrong Williams broke the law by failing to disclose that the Bush administration paid him $240,000 to plug its education policies. Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, a Democrat, said the agency has received about a dozen complaints against Williams. "I certainly hope the FCC will take action and fully investigate whether any laws have been broken," Adelstein said at the commission's regular monthly meeting. None of the other commissioners responded to his statement during the meeting. Afterward, both FCC Chairman Michael Powell, a...

D.C. PROPAGANDA BY GEORGE F. WILL January 13, 2005 -- IN communist East Berlin, one sign of the govern ment's swollen self-regard was the cluttering of public spaces with propaganda banners by which the government praised itself for providing socialism. In Washington today, the Department of Education building is an advertisement for its occupants. Eight entrances are framed by make-believe little red schoolhouses labeled "No Child Left Behind." High on the building's front are two other advertisements for that 2002 law: large banners hector passers-by to visit NoChildLeftBehind.gov. This building-as-billboard is the workplace of those eager beavers who had this...

Here's some advice on bribery: If you're out to corrupt a journalist, bribe one who doesn't already agree with your position. It's just sinful to squander tax dollars on paying off a supporter. Good press should be free. True, Armstrong Williams is hardly a journalist, but rather a commentator with a self-described conservative agenda. He was dropped by his syndicate (as well as The Denver Post) for accepting $240,000 from a public relations firm hired by the Department of Education to promote No Child Left Behind. Williams was greedy. The Department of Education was flat-out wrong. And the whole affair...

First, go to the outrageous opinion piece, published in our local rag, yesterday at http://www.jonesborosun.com/archivededitorials.asp?ID=871 Following is my response to this desperate-to-be-relevant jerk: Gaping Irony Rarely have I seen such a well-reasoned, insightful opinion column in "The Daily Fishwrap" as our esteemed editor's "Behind the news" of January 11. In "He crossed gaping line", our editor excoriates TV/radio host, and opinion columnist, Armstrong Williams, for having accepted a sizeable stipend from the Department of Education for promoting the Bush Administration's -- and Teddy Kennedy's -- No Child Left Behind legislation. Not mentioned in the piece was that nothing illegal was...

The great Yeshiva wit of my era was Laizer Yellin, who studied and still lives in Montreal. Yellin has always been a man of girth as well as mirth; once, he was asked why his kid brother is so skinny. He answered without hesitation: "Because he takes after me." I hate to say this, but we are all beginning to wonder about the Republican Party and some of its Beltway faithful. Are they taking after the Democrats? The proximate cause of these ruminations is the report by USA Today that the Department of Education contracted with conservative talk-show host Armstrong...

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann insisted on Monday night that the case of Armstrong Williams taking money from the Bush administration combined with the CBS panel finding no political bias behind CBS's hit job on President Bush, discredits the idea of any liberal media bias. Olbermann also portrayed CBS as a victim compared to the perpetrators at FNC since CBS News "played within the journalistic rules" while "you're not going to see Fox News appointing an independent investigation into its own journalistic ethics or lack thereof" for running the Swift Boat ads which were "full of distortions." At the top of the...

Reaction to the Armstrong Williams-Department of Education scandal was swift and furious over the weekend, as I wasn't the only one to make a lot of noise on the issue (LaShawn Barber, Michelle Malkin, Rob Bernard, DC Thornton, Amy Ridenour, Sisu, Nate Livingston, Expertise, Booker Rising, Eduwonk, Wizbang, The American Prospect's Tapped column, Powerline & others too numerous to mention).In the wake of Friday's revelations, Tribune Media Services, who syndicated his column to newspapers nationally, abruptly dropped his column, and most likely, his television show, The Right Side with Armstrong Williams (syndicated on Sinclair stations and aired nationally on cable/satellite...