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cjc
Citizen
Username: Cjc
Post Number: 2994
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Monday, January 10, 2005 - 1:09 pm: | 
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OK -- what law was broken? I'm fully prepared to say I'm wrong here.
The ethical lapse is on the part of Williams. Not the Administration. |
Guy
Supporter
Username: Vandalay
Post Number: 466
Registered: 8-2004
| | Posted on Monday, January 10, 2005 - 1:10 pm: |
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Here is Armstrong Williams version of what happened and his apology. He disputes that he was directly paid to personnally promote NCLB.
My apology
Armstrong Williams
January 10, 2005
Dear readers:
In 2003, I agreed to run a paid ad on my syndicated television show, promoting the Department of Education’s No Child Left Behind Act. I subsequently used my column space to support that legislation. This represents an obvious conflict of interests. People have used this conflict of interests to portray my column as being paid for by the Bush Administration. Nothing could be further from the truth.
At the same time, I understand that I exercised bad judgment in running paid advertising for an issue that I frequently write about in my column. People need to know that my column is uncorrupted by any outside influences. I would like to take this opportunity to apologize for my bad judgment, and to better explain the circumstances.
In 2003 Ketchum Communications contacted a small PR firm that I own, Graham Williams Group, to buy ad space on a television show that I own and host. The ad was to promote The Department of Education’s “No Child Left Behind” plan. I have long felt that school vouchers hold the greatest promise of ending the racial education gap in this country. We need to hold schools accountable for their failures and create incentives to change. That is why I have vigorously supported school vouchers for the past decade—in print, on TV, during media appearances and in lectures. I believe that school vouchers represent the greatest chance of stimulating hope for young, inner city school children—often of color. In fact, I am a board member of Black Americans for Educational Options (BAEO), because I feel that school choice plans hold the promise of a new civil rights movement.
In the past I have used my column space to convey the promise of school options. I continued to do so, even after receiving money to run a series of ads on my television show promoting the “No Child Left Behind” act. I now realize that I exercised poor judgment in continuing to write about a topic which my PR firm was being paid to promote.
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.
I also understand that people must be able to trust that my commentary is unbiased. Please know that I supported school vouchers long before the Department of Education ran a single ad on my TV Show. I did not change my views just because my PR firm was receiving paid advertising promoting the No Child Left Behind Act. I did however exercise bad judgment by accepting advertising for an issue that I frequently write about in my column. I apologize for this bad judgment, for creating questions in people’s minds as to whether my commentary was sincere, and for bringing shame and embarrassment to the newspapers that run my commentary.
I accept full responsibility for my lack of good judgment. I am paying the price. Tribune Media has cancelled my column. And I have learned a valuable lesson. I just want to assure you that this will never happen again, and to ask for your forgiveness.
I hope that we can put this mistake behind us, and that I can continue to bring the same unique and impassioned perspective that I brought to this space in the past.
Sincerely,
Armstrong Williams
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Bobkat
Supporter
Username: Bobk
Post Number: 7179
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Monday, January 10, 2005 - 1:43 pm: |
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I think Mr. Williams is trying to obscure something. I don't believe his advocacy, which he calls "advertisements" was labled as such or positioned at station breaks in the manner of normal advertising.
Mr. Williams was wrong to do this, which to his credit he admits. However the Guv'mint was wrong to hire a "stealth" consultant. |
Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 5056
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Monday, January 10, 2005 - 2:07 pm: |
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My cynical side tells me that the administration asked Williams to provide this apology to make it look like he is the only one who did something wrong.
cjc, I can't cite the actual code, but the radio did list the law that they broke. It is illegal for the government to use government money for this sort of stuff, so the party at fault (or a party at fault) is the one who decided to spend the money this way.
Williams is paying the price? In what way? He know longer has this source of income. But he doesn't have to pay back the money he received, which was quite a lot. |
cjc
Citizen
Username: Cjc
Post Number: 2995
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Monday, January 10, 2005 - 2:21 pm: |
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I need a little more than that Tom. |
Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 5057
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Monday, January 10, 2005 - 2:30 pm: |
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http://www.rhsager.com/mo/2005/01/propping_up_ncl.html cites the law.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/08/national/08education.html is also a good read.
If you can't read the NY Times page, try login and password of "grifter06".
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Phenixrising
Citizen
Username: Phenixrising
Post Number: 287
Registered: 9-2004
| | Posted on Monday, January 10, 2005 - 2:45 pm: |
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My cynical side tells me that the administration asked Williams to provide this apology to make it look like he is the only one who did something wrong.
Isn't that typical of this administration? 
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cjc
Citizen
Username: Cjc
Post Number: 2996
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Monday, January 10, 2005 - 2:51 pm: |
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OK, Tom. And thanks.
Could be some legal problems, depending on what "propaganda" is versus dissemination of information about government policy and programs and how Congress defines it (which it hasn't done, per the link I read). Still, Williams lack of disclosure is the key, I think. If the Administration told him to be quiet about it, then that would be the 'covert' nature that Congress forbids it's members and be another problem.
We'll see. |
Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 5059
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Monday, January 10, 2005 - 2:59 pm: |
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So are you saying you still don't believe it's illegal?
Phenixrising, yes, typical, and that's where my cynicism comes from. |
Dr. Winston O'Boogie
Citizen
Username: Casey
Post Number: 955
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Monday, January 10, 2005 - 3:09 pm: |
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this is what we've come to in government and business ethics. some people are fine with this because it may not technically violate a statute.
some things are legal, but still wrong.
Using a "journalist" as a PR rep is wrong and misleading. |
Phenixrising
Citizen
Username: Phenixrising
Post Number: 292
Registered: 9-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 12, 2005 - 8:08 am: |
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http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id= 1000749944
Several Papers Nix Self-Syndicated Armstrong Williams Column
By Dave Astor
Published: January 10, 2005 4:20 PM ET
NEW YORK A spot-check of the newspapers that had been publishing Armstrong Williams' column indicates he may have a tough time self-syndicating, as he told E&P Friday he hopes to do.
Tribune Media Services (TMS) Friday terminated its contract with Williams after revelations that he accepted $240,000 from the Bush administration to promote the No Child Left Behind education-reform law on his TV and radio shows and that he mentioned NCLB at least four times last year in his column (See E&P Online, Jan. 7). Williams apologized, and he also told E&P he planned to try to continue his column via self-syndication starting today.
Using a list of newspaper clients on Williams' Web site, E&P contacted 10 of them. Most of the papers reached will no longer use his column.
"He violated a public trust," said Mary Ann Lindley, editorial-page editor of the Tallahassee (Fla.) Democrat, which ran Williams occasionally. "The competition is so keen that if you fall from grace, there are a million other people to choose from."
Lindley added that she doesn't think Williams is that great a writer, so it wasn't hard for the Democrat to decide to no longer publish him. But she noted that the paper still would have dropped Williams even if it really liked his column.
Denney Clements, editorial-page editor of The Sun News in Myrtle Beach, S.C., did admire Williams' syndicated feature but will drop it nonethess. "I loved his column, and it had a large following among our readers," said Clements. "But it's absolutely essential, regardless of a column's ideology, for it to be seen as an independent voice that's not shilling for the Bush administration or any other government or special interest." Clements said he received a Williams e-mail containing an apology and information about the column being self-syndicated.
Beth Padgett, editorial-page editor of The Greenville (S.C.) News, said the paper decided to drop Williams Friday even before TMS announced the contract termination. "We're not going to publish him again," she said. Padgett noted that the $240,000 payment was related to Williams' broadcast work, but "it still creates such an appearance of a conflict that we could not in good conscience continue his column. We don't care if readers agree or disagree with a column, but we want them to have confidence that its opinions aren't colored by any business relationship they're not aware of."
Mike Fitts, associate editor of The State in Columbia, S.C., told E&P that the paper will no longer run Williams' column. "We feel he cost himself a great deal of credibility," said Fitts. "He crossed a line." But Fitts added that Williams will still be allowed to submit guest op-ed pieces, which the State would decide to run or not run as it would with any other submission. Fitts noted that Williams is from South Carolina, and has written non-TMS-syndicated pieces for the State in the past.
Several editors said they have no problem running op-ed pieces advocating for various interests as long as the bio clearly identifies the writer's connection to an issue. Newspaper readers, until last Friday, weren't aware that Williams and his shows had received U.S. Department of Education money.
The Post and Courier has no plans at this point to keep publishing the column, which it had not used often. But Williams said she would at least discuss the matter with others at the paper.
*********************************
Can't stand the guy anyways.  |
Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 5110
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 12, 2005 - 2:29 pm: |
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phenixrising, thank you for that, but I don't really care much about the future of Williams's career. The Bush administration's actions and policies are a much bigger issue. |
nan
Citizen
Username: Nan
Post Number: 1725
Registered: 2-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, January 13, 2005 - 9:38 pm: |
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Here’s how the The Black Commentator weighed in on this.
Armstrong Williams: The Biggest Whore of All
Armstrong Williams is “the premiere Black political whore in America,” wrote Black Commentator Co-Publishers Glen Ford and Peter Gamble in our December 12, 2002 issue. In the interest of full disclosure, we revealed our particular grievance: that Williams had hopelessly polluted America’s Black Forum (ABF), the first nationally syndicated Black news interview program on commercial television, created by Ford and Gamble in 1977. “Since the mid-Nineties,” we wrote, “ABF has devolved into a menagerie of professional Black propagandists in service of the most vicious elements of the Republican Party. It is a bizarre experience.” ABF had become “America’s Black Right-wing Forum” – the title of our Cover Story.
For a time, white rightwing columnist Pat Buchanan was a regular guest on ABF. So it came as little surprise that the program, which once generated weekly, worldwide headlines on the scale of Meet the Press, Issues and Answers, and Face the Nation, finally became just another brothel in Armstrong Williams’ political red light district – a quickies venue for paying customers like Bush Education Secretary, Rod Paige.
Armstrong Williams’ services were procured by written contract – an innovation in the political payola trade – which stipulated that "Mr. Williams shall utilize his long-term working relationships with 'America's Black Forum'…to encourage the producers to periodically address the No Child Left Behind Act [NCLB]," according to the New York Times. In return for $240,000 in public funds, laundered as “advertising” fees, the contract required Williams to “regularly comment on NCLB during the course of his broadcasts" on his own TV show, The Right Side, and that "Secretary Paige and other department officials shall have the option of appearing from time to time as studio guests." Williams had no trouble arranging for Paige to appear on America’s Black Forum, as well – a freebie for the big-spending Bush crew.
Williams’ public promiscuity cost him dearly, causing Tribune Media Services to terminate syndication of his column to 50 newspapers, including USA Today, which broke the story on January 7. The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) charges that the Department of Education contract with Williams “is in violation of the Publicity and Propaganda clause included in annual appropriations bills for decades.” Congressional Democrats wrote a letter to President Bush. “Covert propaganda to influence public opinion is unethical and dangerous," they said.
The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) called on the White House to “rebuke those in the Department of Education who used taxpayer dollars to pay off conservative commentator Armstrong Williams in an attempt to influence public opinion on administration policy.”
“He’s tainted fruit,” said NABJ vice president for broadcast, Barbara Ciara. “And he’s unfairly indicted all commentators who have their own independent opinion, don’t need a script from the administration and don’t need to be paid off.”
But of course, Armstrong Williams has never been a journalist, nor has he ever uttered or written a word that could qualify as straightforward political commentary. Since 1979, when the 20-year-old signed on with his “mentor,” South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond and, later, as an aide to Clarence Thomas, then chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Williams has been a rightwing political operative for hire – a specialty he turned into a lucrative business. As we reported back in 2002: “Williams' public relations firm, the Graham Williams Group, co-founded with Oprah boyfriend Stedman Graham, specializes in serving ‘public policy organizations’ – the institutional Right. He is the Hardest Working Man in Ho' Business.”
Although the white Right is Williams’ principal client, powerful Blacks are also to blame for inflicting him on the citizenry. Cathy Hughes, owner of 69-station-strong Radio One, gave Williams his first broadcast commentator slot in the mid-Eighties, back when her holdings consisted of just two stations, in Washington and Baltimore. In effect, Hughes credentialized Williams as a broadcast “journalist” two decades ago. Until last week’s furor, Hughes’ TV One cable operation carried Williams’ program, On Point, where Rod Paige appeared, last year. TV One CEO Johnathon Rodgers told the Washington Post he’s pulled the show pending an “investigation,” and that he knew nothing about Williams’ contract with Paige’s department. Williams claims he informed TV One about the deal.
To be of value to the white Right, Black mercenaries must appear to have some standing in the African American community. The Uniworld Group, the current producers of America’s Black Forum, gave Williams such a weekly platform. It is clear that Uniworld made a “strategic” decision in 1996 to position the program on the right. Armstrong Williams’ presence on the show is a product – not the cause – of ABF’s rightward turn. In the ABF environment created by Uniworld, Williams had no difficulty fulfilling his “contract.”
A much larger crime
Although Williams richly deserves public excoriation, self-righteous journalists of all ethnicities and persuasions are missing the big story. Rod Paige’s $240,000 propaganda payment to Williams is puny compared to the tons of cash the Department of Education lavishes on organizations pushing school vouchers and privatization – more than $75 million by the end of 2003, according to a report by People for the American Way. (See , “Bush’s Phony ‘Grassroots’ Voucher ‘Movement,’” December 4, 2003.) More than a year later, that figure has almost certainly passed the $100 million mark in grants and “contracts” to groups whose mission is “to discredit the very concept of public education.” Much of the work is pure propaganda, euphemistically dubbed “public education” on the “school choice” aspects of No Child Left Behind – the same mission Williams was contracted to perform. Among the multi-million dollar recipients is the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO), the voucher front group created by the arch-reactionary Bradley and Walton Family Foundations and now feeding at the public trough. Williams was a founding director of BAEO, as reported in our inaugural issue Cover Story, “Fruit of the Poisoned Tree,” April 5, 2002. Williams’ $240,000 contract was his cut from the Bush voucher bagman, Rod Paige. No wonder he has no intention of giving the money back.
In pillorying Williams, corporate media ignore their own culpability. Our colleagues at the NorthStar Network get it mostly right:
“For some time now, Williams and his ilk, have been lapped up by newspaper and radio syndication groups, and the cable news channels while having no real constituency. In the process the media has been partially responsible for creating the false impression that political conservatism was taking hold in the Black mainstream. Williams, Ward Connerly, and others, have been given a role of prominence by the news media that far surpasses their standing among Blacks. At the same time Black progressive voices have been overlooked by news organizations that seem far more interested in creating an entertaining, albeit false, sense of conflict and division between Blacks. Black conservatives, and their white shadows, have fared well from a news environment in which journalistic standards have been sacrificed for ratings. The story behind Williams’ payment is most likely just one of many such arrangements that have served to dupe an already connived American public.”
We differ with NorthStar only on the matter of ratings. Any focus group could inform corporate media that Armstrong Williams is among the most despised personalities in Black America – right up there with his old friend and boss, Clarence Thomas. That couldn’t be good for ratings among the important Black demographic – and Williams is so generally obnoxious we doubt that he’s a big draw among whites, either. No, corporate media boosted Williams because he reflects the worldview of corporate executives, the people who really run the show. USA Today broke the Armstrong Williams scandal, but they previously ran his journalistically worthless column, week after week. He was speaking their language.
In broadcasting especially, “journalism” is rapidly ceasing to exist. The Williams affair presents us with the spectacle of irate “journalists” who daily package propaganda in service to the powerful, bristling with indignation over a propagandist who gets paid directly by those same powers.
“News” has devolved to a corporate product. Armstrong Williams is also a corporate product. He may still have some shelf life left.
— Glen Ford and Peter Gamble
The Black Commentator
2005-01-13
http://www.blackcommentator.com/121/121_cover_williams.html
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cjc
Citizen
Username: Cjc
Post Number: 3009
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Friday, January 14, 2005 - 11:30 am: |
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Uh-oh.....
By WILLIAM M. BULKELEY and JAMES BANDLER
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
January 14, 2005; Page B2
Howard Dean's presidential campaign hired two Internet political "bloggers" as consultants so that they would say positive things about the former governor's campaign in their online journals, according to a former high-profile Dean aide.
Zephyr Teachout, the former head of Internet outreach for Mr. Dean's campaign, made the disclosure earlier this week in her own Web log, Zonkette. She said "to be very clear, they never committed to supporting Dean for the payment -- but it was very clearly, internally, our goal." The hiring of the consultants was noted in several publications at the time.
The issue of political payments to commentators has become hot following disclosures that the Bush administration paid a conservative radio and newspaper pundit, Armstrong Williams, $240,000 to plug its "No Child Left Behind" education policy.
With the growing importance of blogs -- short for Web logs -- Ms. Teachout said she thinks bloggers need to rethink their attitudes toward ethics. A blog is an online personal journal or series of postings, dealing with just about anything. Millions of people use blogs to post diatribes, rants, links to other sites and erudite analyses hourly, daily or sporadically. Some make a little money by selling ads. The Dean campaign's adroit use of the Internet helped make its long-shot effort credible.
Ms. Teachout's posting shook the confidence of many people in the blogosphere, as many bloggers like to call the online community. Bloggers have been quick to criticize the unspoken biases of mainstream media, and they helped expose the questionable documents used by CBS News in a report about President Bush's National Guard experience.
The partisan Democratic political bloggers who were hired by the Dean campaign were Jerome Armstrong, who publishes the blog MyDD, and Markos Zuniga, who publishes DailyKos. DailyKos is the ninth most linked blog on the Internet, according to Technorati, a measurement service, and in October, at the height of the presidential campaign, it received as many as one million daily visits.
The two men, who jointly operated a small political consulting firm, said they didn't believe the Dean campaign had been trying to buy their influence. Both men noted that they had promoted Mr. Dean's campaign long before they were hired and continued to do so after their contract with the campaign ended.
Mr. Zuniga said they were paid $3,000 a month for four months and he noted that he had posted a disclosure near the top of his daily blog that he worked for the Dean campaign doing "technical consulting." Mr. Armstrong said he shut down his site when he went to work for the campaign, then resumed posting after his contract ended.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Dean said the two bloggers hired by the campaign did nothing unethical because both disclosed their connection to the Dean operation.
Ms. Teachout said the campaign never explicitly asked the bloggers to promote Mr. Dean. But she said the Dean campaign wanted to keep them from shifting to rivals. Ms. Teachout said she has been raising the issue as part of a broader push on her part to get bloggers who are also consultants to publish their client lists. She said that as more people have turned to bloggers for news, she came to the conclusion that bloggers "have an active responsibility to be absolutely transparent."
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Nohero
Citizen
Username: Nohero
Post Number: 4255
Registered: 10-1999
| | Posted on Friday, January 14, 2005 - 11:47 am: |
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It's only "uh-oh" if -
(a) you don't actually read the article (as in, "Mr. Zuniga (sic) said they were paid $3,000 a month for four months and he noted that he had posted a disclosure near the top of his daily blog that he worked for the Dean campaign doing 'technical consulting.' Mr. Armstrong said he shut down his site when he went to work for the campaign, then resumed posting after his contract ended."),
and
(b) ignore the actual disclosure (see http://www.dailykos.net/archives/002972.html) which was made at the time by the individual who continued to operate his blog:
quote:I spent this weekend in Burlington, VT, where we officially accepted work on behalf of presidential candidate Howard Dean. Dean joins a Senate candidate in our still small but hopefully growing roster of clients.
Of course, this means many of you will accuse of me of certain biases (with good reason).
That's fine. I never claimed to be free of bias. But I've always been able to see past such biases to do what I love to do -- analyze the political landscape. For example, I'm biased against Gephardt, yet have had no problem slapping him in first for the Cattle Call. My approach to writing will remain unchanged. I won't turn this into a rah-rah for Dean site. That's just not my style.
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Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 5137
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Friday, January 14, 2005 - 12:08 pm: |
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Thanks, cjc. I'd say the Dean campaign is guilty, too.
Should the punishment be in proportion to the amount of money taken? Maybe. $12,000 is one twentieth of $240,000.
Also, federal money is more crucial than campaign fund money, though they both deserve scrutiny. I didn't contribute to the Dean campaign, so while they did wrong, they didn't do it with my money. Bush did wrong with your money and mine.
Let's put these things in perspective.
Furthermore, Dean's wrongdoings don't lessen Bush's. "He did it, too!" is not a valid defense, for Bush or Dean. |
cjc
Citizen
Username: Cjc
Post Number: 3010
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Friday, January 14, 2005 - 4:21 pm: |
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RIght. Technical Consulting has nothing to do with any opinion that comes from these people in relation to Dean. Absolutely.
And Williams already believed in NCLB. Should have admitted he was just technically consulting too.
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Madden 11
Citizen
Username: Madden_11
Post Number: 589
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Friday, January 14, 2005 - 5:18 pm: |
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And Williams already believed in NCLB. Should have admitted he was just technically consulting too.
Yes, he should have. It's called ethics, and that's the entire point. To say that these two cases are the same when one person disclosed the paid relationship and the other didn't is idiotic.
Is there anything Bush supporters won't excuse? We know torture and death squads get the thumbs up...is anyone really suprised that taxpayer-funded propaganda is A-OK? |
wharfrat
Citizen
Username: Wharfrat
Post Number: 1514
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Friday, January 14, 2005 - 6:32 pm: |
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Back to the issue at hand-
quote:Although Williams richly deserves public excoriation, self-righteous journalists of all ethnicities and persuasions are missing the big story. Rod Paige’s $240,000 propaganda payment to Williams is puny compared to the tons of cash the Department of Education lavishes on organizations pushing school vouchers and privatization – more than $75 million by the end of 2003, according to a report by People for the American Way. (See , “Bush’s Phony ‘Grassroots’ Voucher ‘Movement,’” December 4, 2003.) More than a year later, that figure has almost certainly passed the $100 million mark in grants and “contracts” to groups whose mission is “to discredit the very concept of public education.” Much of the work is pure propaganda, euphemistically dubbed “public education” on the “school choice” aspects of No Child Left Behind – the same mission Williams was contracted to perform.
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nan
Citizen
Username: Nan
Post Number: 1733
Registered: 2-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 19, 2005 - 5:23 am: |
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In case you missed this in the Sunday Times. Don't.
January 16, 2005
FRANK RICH
All the President's Newsmen
The day after the co-host Tucker Carlson made his farewell appearance and two days after the new president of CNN made the admirable announcement that he would soon kill the program altogether, a television news miracle occurred: even as it staggered through its last nine yards to the network guillotine, "Crossfire" came up with the worst show in its fabled 23-year history.
This was a half-hour of television so egregious that it makes Jon Stewart's famous pre-election rant seem, if anything, too kind. This time "Crossfire" wasn't just "hurting America," as Mr. Stewart put it, by turning news into a nonsensical gong show. It was unwittingly, or perhaps wittingly, complicit in the cover-up of a scandal.
I do not mean to minimize the CBS News debacle and other recent journalistic outrages at The New York Times and elsewhere. But the Jan. 7 edition of CNN's signature show can stand as an exceptionally ripe paradigm of what is happening to the free flow of information in a country in which a timid news media, the fierce (and often covert) Bush administration propaganda machine, lax and sometimes corrupt journalistic practices, and a celebrity culture all combine to keep the public at many more than six degrees of separation from anything that might resemble the truth.
On this particular "Crossfire," the featured guest was Armstrong Williams, a conservative commentator, talk-show host and newspaper columnist (for papers like The Washington Times and The Detroit Free Press, among many others, according to his Web site). Thanks to investigative reporting by USA Today, he had just been unmasked as the frontman for a scheme in which $240,000 of taxpayers' money was quietly siphoned to him through the Department of Education and a private p.r. firm so that he would "regularly comment" upon (translation: shill for) the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind policy in various media venues during an election year. Given that "Crossfire" was initially conceived as a program for tough interrogation and debate, you'd think that the co-hosts still on duty after Mr. Carlson's departure might try to get some answers about this scandal, whose full contours, I suspect, we are only just beginning to discern.
But there is nothing if not honor among bloviators. "On the left," as they say at "Crossfire," Paul Begala, a Democratic political consultant, offered condemnations of the Bush administration but had only soft questions and plaudits for Mr. Williams. Three times in scarcely as many minutes Mr. Begala congratulated his guest for being "a stand-up guy" simply for appearing in the show's purportedly hostile but entirely friendly confines. When Mr. Williams apologized for having crossed "some ethical lines," that was enough to earn Mr. Begala's benediction: "God bless you for that."
"On the right" was the columnist Robert Novak, who "in the interests of full disclosure" told the audience he is a "personal friend" of Mr. Williams, whom he "greatly" admires as "one of the foremost voices for conservatism in America." Needless to say, Mr. Novak didn't have any tough questions, either, but we should pause a moment to analyze this "Crossfire" co-host's disingenuous use of the term "full disclosure."
Last year Mr. Novak had failed to fully disclose - until others in the press called him on it - that his son is the director of marketing for Regnery, the company that published "Unfit for Command," the Swift boat veterans' anti-Kerry screed that Mr. Novak flogged relentlessly on CNN and elsewhere throughout the campaign. Nor had he fully disclosed, as Mary Jacoby of Salon reported, that Regnery's owner also publishes his subscription newsletter ($297 a year). Nor has Mr. Novak fully disclosed why he has so far eluded any censure in the federal investigation of his outing of a C.I.A. operative, Valerie Plame, while two other reporters, Judith Miller of The Times and Matt Cooper of Time, are facing possible prison terms in the same case. In this context, Mr. Novak's "full disclosure" of his friendship with Mr. Williams is so anomalous that it raised many more questions than it answers.
That he and Mr. Begala would be allowed to lob softballs at a man who may have been a cog in illegal government wrongdoing, on a show produced by television's self-proclaimed "most trusted" news network, is bad enough. That almost no one would notice, let alone protest, is a snapshot of our cultural moment, in which hidden agendas in the presentation of "news" metastasize daily into a Kafkaesque hall of mirrors that could drive even the most earnest American into abject cynicism. But the ugly bigger picture reaches well beyond "Crossfire" and CNN.
Mr. Williams has repeatedly said in his damage-control press appearances that he was being paid the $240,000 only to promote No Child Left Behind. He also routinely says that he made the mistake of taking the payola because he wasn't part of the "media elite" and therefore didn't know "the rules and guidelines" of journalistic conflict-of-interest. His own public record tells us another story entirely. While on the administration payroll he was not only a cheerleader for No Child Left Behind but also for President Bush's Iraq policy and his performance in the presidential debates. And for a man who purports to have learned of media ethics only this month, Mr. Williams has spent an undue amount of time appearing as a media ethicist on both CNN and the cable news networks of NBC.
He took to CNN last October to give his own critique of the CBS News scandal, pointing out that the producer of the Bush-National Guard story, Mary Mapes, was guilty of a conflict of interest because she introduced her source, the anti-Bush partisan Bill Burkett, to a Kerry campaign operative, Joe Lockhart. In this Mr. Williams's judgment was correct, but grave as Ms. Mapes's infraction was, it isn't quite in the same league as receiving $240,000 from the United States Treasury to propagandize for the Bush campaign on camera. Mr. Williams also appeared with Alan Murray on CNBC to trash Kitty Kelley's book on the Bush family, on CNN to accuse the media of being Michael Moore's "p.r. machine" and on Tina Brown's CNBC talk show to lambaste Mr. Stewart for doing a "puff interview" with John Kerry on "The Daily Show" (which Mr. Williams, unsurprisingly, seems to think is a real, not a fake, news program).
But perhaps the most fascinating Williams TV appearance took place in December 2003, the same month that he was first contracted by the government to receive his payoffs. At a time when no one in television news could get an interview with Dick Cheney, Mr. Williams, of all "journalists," was rewarded with an extended sit-down with the vice president for the Sinclair Broadcast Group, a nationwide owner of local stations affiliated with all the major networks. In that chat, Mr. Cheney criticized the press for its coverage of Halliburton and denounced "cheap shot journalism" in which "the press portray themselves as objective observers of the passing scene, when they obviously are not objective."
This is a scenario out of "The Manchurian Candidate." Here we find Mr. Cheney criticizing the press for a sin his own government was at that same moment signing up Mr. Williams to commit. The interview is broadcast by the same company that would later order its ABC affiliates to ban Ted Koppel's "Nightline" recitation of American casualties in Iraq and then propose showing an anti-Kerry documentary, "Stolen Honor," under the rubric of "news" in prime time just before Election Day. (After fierce criticism, Sinclair retreated from that plan.) Thus the Williams interview with the vice president, implicitly presented as an example of the kind of "objective" news Mr. Cheney endorses, was in reality a completely subjective, bought-and-paid-for fake news event for a broadcast company that barely bothers to fake objectivity and both of whose chief executives were major contributors to the Bush-Cheney campaign. The Soviets couldn't have constructed a more ingenious or insidious plot to bamboozle the citizenry.
Ever since Mr. Williams was exposed by USA Today, he has been stonewalling all questions about what the Bush administration knew of his activities and when it knew it. In his account, he was merely a lowly "subcontractor" of the education department. "Never was the White House ever mentioned anytime during this," he told NBC's Campbell Brown, as if that were enough to deflect Ms. Brown's observation that "the Department of Education works for the White House." For its part, the White House is saying that the whole affair is, in the words of the press secretary, Scott McClellan, "a contracting matter" and "a decision by the Department of Education." In other words, the buck stops (or started) with Rod Paige, the elusive outgoing education secretary who often appeared with Mr. Williams in his pay-for-play propaganda.
But we now know that there have been at least three other cases in which federal agencies have succeeded in placing fake news reports on television during the Bush presidency. The Department of Health and Human Services, the Census Bureau and the Office of National Drug Control Policy have all sent out news "reports" in which, to take one example, fake newsmen purport to be "reporting" why the administration's Medicare prescription-drug policy is the best thing to come our way since the Salk vaccine. So far two Government Accountability Office investigations have found that these Orwellian stunts violated federal law that prohibits "covert propaganda" purchased with taxpayers' money. But the Williams case is the first one in which a well-known talking head has been recruited as the public face for the fake news instead of bogus correspondents (recruited from p.r. companies) with generic eyewitness-news team names like Karen Ryan and Mike Morris.
Or is Mr. Williams merely the first one of his ilk to be exposed? Every time this administration puts out fiction through the news media - the "Rambo" exploits of Jessica Lynch, the initial cover-up of Pat Tillman's death by friendly fire - it's assumed that a credulous and excessively deferential press was duped. But might there be more paid agents at loose in the media machine? In response to questions at the White House, Mr. McClellan has said that he is "not aware" of any other such case and that he hasn't "heard" whether the administration's senior staff knew of the Williams contract - nondenial denials with miles of wiggle room. Mr. Williams, meanwhile, has told both James Rainey of The Los Angeles Times and David Corn of The Nation that he has "no doubt" that there are "others" like him being paid for purveying administration propaganda and that "this happens all the time." So far he is refusing to name names - a vow of omertŕ all too reminiscent of that taken by the low-level operatives first apprehended in that "third-rate burglary" during the Nixon administration.
If CNN, just under new management, wants to make amends for the sins of "Crossfire," it might dispatch some real reporters to find out just which "others" Mr. Williams is talking about and to follow his money all the way back to its source.
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Mustt_mustt
Citizen
Username: Mustt_mustt
Post Number: 205
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 19, 2005 - 7:03 am: |
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God bless you for the post, Nan.
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notehead
Supporter
Username: Notehead
Post Number: 1882
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 19, 2005 - 10:28 am: |
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Fantastic article. Thanks for posting it. |
jerkyboy
Citizen
Username: Jerkyboy
Post Number: 35
Registered: 12-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 19, 2005 - 10:36 am: |
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Whine, whine, whine. |
Robert Livingston
Citizen
Username: Rob_livingston
Post Number: 695
Registered: 7-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 19, 2005 - 10:40 am: |
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Conditions as they now exist in the USA reveal many of the earmarks of a country ripe for dictatorship. This Williams business is just the latest example. There is deep fear. A deep existential anxiety. These fears are fed by the Bush Administration's constant fanning of the flames of religion, smarmy patriotism, anti-intellectualism, culture war, class war, and other related forms of demagoguery, including Bush's covert propaganda in the form of Williams, and certainly many others...
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Ukealalio
Citizen
Username: Ukealalio
Post Number: 1715
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 19, 2005 - 10:40 am: |
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Great song, ridiculous post. |
jerkyboy
Citizen
Username: Jerkyboy
Post Number: 37
Registered: 12-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 19, 2005 - 8:50 pm: |
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Ridiculous post?
For boy livingston?
Un-original not surprising.
ENJOY WATCHING THE BUSH PARADE TOMORROW!
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