A black media pundit who is willing to denounce so-called “black groupthink” in support of conservative policies is worth his weight in Republican gold. Literally.
On Jan. 7, USA Today reported that the Bush administration paid (or more accurately bribed) syndicated columnist Armstrong Williams to produce positive press about the president’s chief education reform legislation, No Child Left Behind. The payola scheme cost taxpayers $240,000.
For his egregious ethical violation, Williams has lost his newspaper syndication contract with Tribune Media Services and most of his friends in the conservative media. The National Review’s Jonah Goldberg had to sheepishly admit “that if Bill Clinton had gotten caught giving Joe Conason a quarter of a million dollars to be flogging their policies, guys like me would have smoke coming out of our ears, and the right would go crazy.”
Even Williams himself, talking on CNN’s “Crossfire” (or “Crosstalk” as it should be called), couldn’t defend his own actions. “I used bad judgment. As a media pundit, people have to trust what I say. They have to believe in what I say. And they must believe that I’m saying it not because I’m being paid. … I should be criticized, and I crossed some ethical lines. I’ve learned from this. It will never happen again.”
Only the responsibility-phobic Bush administration seems unwilling to admit any wrongdoing. A Department of Education spokesperson insisted that the bribe was “a permissible use of taxpayer funds” that produced a “straightforward distribution of information.” Even Bill Clinton eventually said he was sorry.
Williams should give the $240,000 bribe back to the American people, and Congress should demand an investigation into the legality of the deal. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has already found the Bush administration guilty of illegally using taxpayer money on “covert propaganda” to promote their Medicare prescription drug plan. Video news segments were produced to look like the real thing. The government was never attributed as a source, thus violating federal law.
An opinion columnist taking money to write government propaganda is a horrendous violation of journalistic ethics. Even more disturbing is the Bush administration’s attempt to deceive the public by presenting propaganda as fact. Why should people trust anything that the president or the media tells them? At this point, they probably shouldn’t.

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