But, gentlemen, he has a mandate

Three legislators have written a letter to the Preznit complaining about the purchase of journalist Armstrong Williams.

We are writing to urge you to immediately terminate - and recover funds from - the contract between your administration and the journalist Armstrong Williams. According to media reports, $240,000 in taxpayer funds were transferred to Mr. Williams in exchange for his agreement to promote the Administration's "No Child Left Behind" initiative on his broadcasts [...] These payments [...] constitute a clear violation of the "Publicity and Propaganda" laws recently passed by Congress.

[...]

In addition to recovering these funds, we would urge you to disclose if any other journalists have been paid by your Administration to skew their media reports in favor of your initiatives, proposals or political messages.

[...]

In addition to the illegality of these actions taken by your Administration, we believe that the act of bribing journalists to bias their news in favor of government policies undermines the integrity of our democracy. Actions like this were common in the Soviet Union, but until now, thought to be long extinguished in our country.

These revelations [...] are the latest - and most disturbing - in a series of actions by your Administration to manipulate public opinion through covert propaganda. On May 19, 2004, the GAO found that your Administration illegally spent taxpayer funds on covert propaganda by paying Ketchum Incorporated to produce fake news stories promoting the image of the new Mediare law. This week, the GAO found that fake news stories produced by the Office of National Drug Control Policy also violated the "Publicity and Propaganda" clause. In addition, on November 19, 2004, the GAO launched a new inquiry into the legality of the Department of Education's contract with Ketchum to produce fake news stories and create favorability rankings of journalists.

Read the whole letter here (pdf).

The only thing I would take exception to is the fact that after all they are saying, they're still addressing the letter to "Honorable" George W. Bush.

Williams told USA Today that he understood how people might find the arrangement problematic, but "I wanted to do it because it's something I believe in." The newspaper also quoted the top Democrat on the House Education Committee, Rep. George Miller of California, as saying that the contract is "a very questionable use of taxpayers' money" that's "probably illegal." Miller said he will seek an investigation.

A letter posted today on the Poynter Institute's Romenesko site said: "If secretly taking a quarter million of taxpayer dollars to flack the administration on a contested political issue isn't a blatant violation of journalistic ethics, what does it take?"

Editor & Publisher article



Can't wait to see what The Black Commentator will be saying about Mr. Williams on this. They haven't been too flattering in the past.