Free Republic

In the past, U.N. agencies have also sponsored "traveling seminars" for journalists so they write positive stories about U.N. projects. When conservative commentator Armstrong Williams was exposed for taking money from the Bush administration, his credibility was cast into doubt and news organizations expressed regrets for having had him on the air to comment on public policy issues. Williams was tainted by a conflict of interest that should have been revealed to the viewing audience. He was said to be a channel for Bush administration propaganda.

Federal Probe: Pundit Hire Not Unethical Education Department Probe: Hiring of Pundit Not Illegal or Unethical, but Showed Poor Judgment By BEN FELLER The Associated Press Apr. 16, 2005 - The Bush administration's hiring of a pundit to tout its education agenda was not illegal or unethical, but it was a poor decision and continued even after concerns were raised to the White House, an internal investigation found. The report by the Education Department's inspector general cited a pattern of blunders that led to the $240,000 contract with conservative commentator Armstrong Williams. Senior officials showed poor management, information didn't...

Congressional investigators will look into whether the Bush administration violated any laws when it paid syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher to help promote a marriage initiative, Democratic Sens. Edward Kennedy and Frank Lautenberg said. The Government Accountability Office told the two senators, who had requested the inquiry, that it would investigate in a letter sent to their offices late Thursday. The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, is already looking into the Education Department's relationship with several public relations firms, which includes the agency's $240,000 contract with syndicated columnist and TV personality Armstrong Williams. The Education Department had hired Williams to...

The advent of CNN and the 24-hour news cycle has created tremendous pressure on the print media to fill their pages with something—anything—to keep the readers coming back. Amid this brutal competition, high mindedness is often an afterthought. The question became how to grasp the attention of this fractured audience. If there aren’t any good stories to report, make one up--create the news, print a few salacious details, anything to fill your pages and shock readers into paying attention. I believe this is what Historian Daniel J. Boorstin dolefully referred to as a pseudo event—the act of creating news just...

Post Mortem The Washington Post catches the Star with its pants down -- and it ain't pretty. AS TOLD TO TONY ORTEGA While the Strip was on a brief vacation, sunning its meaty goodness half a world away, loyal readers kept us abreast of the hometown news by e-mail. That's how we first learned about one of the most embarrassing episodes for this town's major daily newspaper. If you missed it, we don't blame you. The Kansas City Star didn't draw much attention to its gaffe. Only an eagle-eyed reader might have noticed that there was anything unusual about political...

Armstrong Williams, the conservative commentator embroiled in controversy after being paid to promote Bush administration policies, has signed a contract to be a co-host of a daily radio talk show in New York. The three-hour show, "Drive Time Dialogue," will begin on March 15 on WWRL, 1600 AM. Broadcasting from a studio installed in his Capitol Hill offices, Mr. Williams will present the conservative point of view. He will be countered by Sam Greenfield, as the liberal voice, from New York. Adriane Gaines, the general manager of WWRL, said Mr. Williams was hired as part of an effort to "bring...

Big business religion Armstrong Williams February 27, 2005 Corporations and parishioners are increasingly coming together to spread the word of God and make money. All across the country churches—once intimate places of spiritual interconnectedness—have been replaced by stadiums of worship that utilize advanced technological innovations to awe, edify, and rip off those in attendance. The jig goes something like this: Corporations underwrite the construction of vast religious complexes that awe people into regular attendance. The preacher’s image is projected onto a big screen. His calm baritone is beamed out by state of the art speakers. From all sides, his voice...

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...