Wolf D. Fuhrig

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Paying Taxes For Propaganda

For a decade at least, Armstrong Williams had been enjoying a profitable career as a syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services, as host of his own program with the cable channel "On Point," and as a public speaker.

A third-generation Republican, he had always been an advocate of conservative and Christian views in mainstream and black media. He served as a legislative aide to the late Senator Strom Thurmond and as a confidential assistant to the chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Clarence Thomas.

Until recently, Williams was a permanent guest on CNN, MSNBC, and the Fox network. It seemed that, in print and on the air, he simply expressed his own admittedly partisan views--until January 7 when USA Today revealed that during President Bush’s election campaign Williams was hired to promote the administration’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation in publicized comments and with interviews of Education Secretary Rod Paige. For that service the US Department of Education paid him $240,000.

Although Williams appeared to be a journalist, he was actually the chief executive of the Graham Williams Group that advertised itself as an “international public relations firm with clients in entertainment, politics, business, and charitable organizations.” When USA Today revealed his clandestine plugging of NCLB, Judith T. Phair, the president of the Public Relations Society of America, publicly condemned Williams’ decision to promote the NCLB "without revealing that his comments were paid for by a public relations agency under contract to the government."

Williams’ contract was only part of a $1 million deal between the U.S. Department of Education and Ketchum, a public relations firm. A spokesperson for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics told USA Today that the contract might not only be immoral but also illegal because Congress prohibited lobbying for government-funded programs.

Any paid endorsement that is not fully disclosed as such and presented as objective news coverage amounts to a violation of the Public Relations Society’s code of ethics." Alex Jones, director of Harvard's Shorenstein media center, called Williams’ contract "the worst kind of fakery and flackery. It's propaganda masquerading as news, paid by government.” Or more precisely, by the taxpayers.

Yet, Secretary Paige saw nothing wrong with peddling propaganda with taxpayer dollars: “Hiring outside experts to help communicate a complex issue is standard practice,” Paige claimed, “in all sectors of society, local, state, and the federal government.” Williams. however, was not an expert on the NCLB. He was to sell it to the voters. Secretary Paige
apparently could not, or would not, distinguish between the government’s legitimate dissemination of information and partisan propaganda.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) hired two syndicated columnists, Maggie Gallagher and Michael McManus, for $21,000 and $10,000 respectively, to promote the President’s Healthy Marriage Initiative. Both columnists failed to reveal their contractual relationship with HHS--until USA Today had reported it.

Dr. Wade Horn, the HHS assistant secretary for children and families explained: “We live in a complicated world, and people wear many different hats. People who have expertise may also write columns. The line has become blurred between who’s a member of the media and who’s not. Thirty years ago, if you were a columnist, then you were a full-time employee of a newspaper. Columnists today are different.” That may or may not be true, but when a columnist is paid by a government agency, he still has to tell this to his readers.

“ Federal subsidies for political advocacy are on the rise,” reports the CATO Institute. Calling it public relations, the Clinton administration spent $128 million in its second term, the Bush administration $250 million in its first term, for partisan propaganda. One wonders how many self-proclaimed pundits are now on the White House payroll selling us the benefits of Social Security privatization.

Two hundred years ago, Thomas Jefferson rejected it as “sinful and tyrannical” “to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves.”