Pubdate: Wed, 12 Jan 2005
Source: Houston Chronicle (TX)
Copyright: 2005 Houston Chronicle Publishing Company Division, Hearst Newspaper
Contact:  http://www.chron.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/198
Author: Clarence Page

'PAYOLA PUNDITRY' HAS NO PLACE IN SERIOUS JOURNALISM

My conservative pundit friend Armstrong Williams just had the weekend from 
hell, answering phones and juggling interviews like a multitasking press 
agent for Paris Hilton.

"Have you seen the coverage?" he exclaimed over the phone. "I had no idea I 
was this important!"

Well, sorry, my friend, but it's not just about you. There's also the 
matter of $240,000 in taxpayers' money.

That's how much the U.S. Department of Education paid Williams, 45, to 
promote the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind education reform 
policy in his dual roles as public relations CEO and a multimedia news and 
public affairs pundit.

An enterprising USA Today reporter unearthed the deal that the Ketchum 
public-relations firm signed with Williams' Washington-based public 
relations firm, Graham and Williams, in late 2003 on behalf of the 
Education Department.

It required Williams to promote the No Child Left Behind law on his 
nationally syndicated television show and to urge /America's Black Forum,/ 
a syndicated public-affairs television program on which he and I have 
appeared among other panelists, to "periodically address" the law.

The contract also required Williams to interview Education Secretary Rod 
Paige for TV and radio spots that aired during the show in 2004 and allowed 
Paige to appear as an interview guest in a Williams-produced TV show.

"I wanted to do it because it's something I believe in," Williams said.

Unfortunately, payola is wrong, even when you're being paid to do something 
you would have done for free anyway.

Williams probably understood this when he conveniently failed to tell his 
audiences or hardly anyone else at his many jobs and public appearances 
about his cozy contract. When it became a page-one story, he shifted into 
full-PR mode. He confessed to bad judgment, apologized to his audiences and 
promised never -- ever! -- to conflict his interests again. But he refused 
to return the money his firm was paid.

Tribune Media Services, which distributed his column (and mine) nationally, 
dropped him. No problem, he said. He plans to syndicate himself and keep 
all of the money this time. That's Armstrong. Always the entrepreneur.

Of course, that's where his conflicts began. He's not a journalist, but he 
plays one on TV.

My enterprising friend is something quite different from conventional 
journalists, pundits or public relations agents. Like Rush Limbaugh, Anne 
Coulter, Al Franken, Michael Moore or Tavis Smiley, he is an amalgam of all 
three -- with some P.T. Barnum thrown in.

He is larger than journalism. He is, in short, a brand. Brands don't need 
to cover stories. They are the story.

As a passionately outspoken former aide to the late Sen. Strom Thurmond, 
R.-S.C., and adviser to Clarence Thomas when the Supreme Court justice was 
head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Williams built his 
brand as a black conservative at a time when a new pundit industry was 
blossoming.

With cable TV, talk radio and other new media blossoming, you no longer had 
to have a lot to say in order to get air time. You merely had to be 
available at the flip of a producer's Rolodex to give good sound bites from 
the left or the right, depending on which slot needed to be filled.

As Woody Allen's once said, 80 percent of life is showing up. So is 
broadcast punditry.

Now that the media are holding him up to a conventional journalist's 
ethical standards, Williams says he vows to change his ways.

"I'm not going to advocate for anybody or any of the issues that I talk 
about on television," he vowed. "Either you're going to be a journalist or 
out hustling for money. I want to be a journalist."

Thanks, Armstrong, but I'll believe that when you give up your public 
relations business.

As for the bozos who started this mess at the Education Department, it only 
adds injury to insult when our tax dollars help pay for video news releases 
designed to look like regular news reports when inserted into television 
newscasts without any indication of their government funding.

Such fake-news segments probably violate federal propaganda laws, Congress' 
Government Accountability Office recently concluded -- after reviewing some 
segments produced by the Health and Human Services Department under 
Presidents Clinton and Bush and the Office of National Drug Control Policy 
under Bush.

Education Department spokesmen vowed to cooperate with a looming 
congressional probe of this charade. Good.

Secretary Paige is on his way out. Next to go should be anyone who thinks 
fake news is a clever way to educate the public. Sweep 'em out. Leave all 
of those idiots behind.

Page is a Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist specializing in urban 
issues. He is based in Washington, D.C.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Beth