Do you think the government should control aspects of the media by paying journalists to cover what they want? Is this an ethical way for the government to promote programs? What about ethical issues for the journalist?
http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/01/07/bush.journalist.ap/index.html
I’d say “no in most cases”. If a private citizen wants to pay the media to broadcast his opinions that’s freedom of speech. But when the government pays for something it’s using our money, so they need to be held to limits on what they can do. Money should only be spent when it’s serving the public interest. There might be a few cases where the government might have a valid public interest in paying for some announcement but in the majority of cases it would be a partisan issue.
Nope, it’s not ethical. False pretenses lead to false impressions. Viewers were lead to believe Williams was a journalist, when in fact he was an administration shill. If the administration feels the need to hire spokesmen to push their political agenda, they need to do it above board. Doing it in secret like this turns whatever information the “journalist” imparts into disinformation.
I don’t think the Bush Admin can be accused of controlling the journalist with payments. But at the same time, I think this is a terrible, terrible idea. It damages the independence and credibility of both the journalist on the take, and every journalist that vouches for that politician or program. How do we know which ones simply believe in their positions, and which ones are getting paid to do so?
But then again, I felt the same way when it came out that Howard Dean (and other Dems) were paying bloggers to “keep the enthusiasm up” on his campaign.
It is essential that we be able to distinguish between news and paid political commentary. The Bush Administration and Sinclair stations aren’t helping any.
As an educator, I’m not surprised the Administration had to bribe someone to say something good about No Child Left Behind. It is a mess..
They can certainly be accused of intending to deceive us. It’s not the first time for them either.
Here’s this week’s other example of the admins passion for deception: White House memo: Pitch Social Security doom
I just saw an interview with Armstrong Williams; he acknowledged that what he did left a very poor impression and raised lots of questions about his objectivity but he stated that he had always supported NCLB and didn’t have to be paid to say so.
That’s as may be however it was still a pretty knuckleheaded move.
So, in other words, he was completely RIPPING OFF THE GOVERNMENT? And that’s better?!
That’s all you have to say? That this is bad for journalism??
There is something grossly absurd about our own taxdollars going to sell us the ideas we are supposed to decide whether or not get passed. Taking my money to build a fire department is one thing. But taking my money in order to tell me what to vote for and support politically? I defy anyone to try and squeeze that into any sort of conservative principle. If this sort of thing had happened on this scale under a Democratic administration, Republicans would be writing hordes of schreecy books about government mind control.
Can you seriously not tell the difference between paying random people to campaign for you with campaign funds and the Bush administration paying a journalist under the table with tax dollars to promote a partisan policy?
I should note that this is just one of many stories in a growing trend. The most amusing one is described by Matt Welch over at Reason;
http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/2005/01/gao_denounces_g.shtml#comments
Kick ass!
This is incredible. One would hope that this is an isolated case but, like the torture scandal, it’s likely the first of many that we’ll eventually find out about. Government officials have a way of putting their spin on things. It’s called making a speech. If your policies are so flimsy that you can’t defend them on their own merits and have to bribe journalists to feed the public your spin, then you’ve got problems. The press serves an important role in the American system of checks and balances- only now the administration is writing checks to put the news out of balance. I’d love to see every conservative commentator release all their bank statements- my guess is we’d see a lot of unexplained deposits.
No, no, no, to be truly ethical, networks should only be influenced by entities like P&G, Ford, GM, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Johnson & Johnson, etc. Actually, today it seems like every single journalist and publication has an AGENDA it is pushing and “objectivity” is a historical artifact. In this case - who really cares - and what did you really expect? In a choice between “integrity” and a few new Cadillacs and gold chains, which do you think will prevail? And, especially if later a mere sentence like “Ummm, ah did the wrong thing - maybe I shunt have did that” is all that is required to erase the act.
The trouble here isn’t the networks, it’s the US Government.
They’re the agency behind this deception.
It’s like payola, only double plus good.
I think this is probably an excellent example of slippery slope. Way back in the 70s and 80s, conservative ideologues hit up wealthy conservatives for huge amounts of money, which they used to build conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute. They developed a group of strong conservative thinkers and writers who eventually made their way into mainstream media. They also supported mainstream writers whose ideas were sympatico with theirs.
All this is apple pie American good stuff. Straight up, by the book fair play.
These conservative writers continued to get economic support in the form of paid speeches before their meetings, and the meetings of their members. Also legal, but kinda dicey in the case of mainstream journalists, because a guy who’s making beaucoups of bucks by working for conservative groups and is getting paid the usual measly wages offered by publishers, you have to wonder who he’s REALLY working for. One suspects, not the publisher, even though what the conservatives are paying the “journalists” to write is something they likely would have written anyway.
Basically, the effect of this is that news and commentary is replaced by what might as well be so many press releases. And of course an ambitious young journalist who wants to be well paid is very likely to find it much more profitable to hold conservative viewpoints rather than liberal ones.
It’s just a small step from there to paying a supposedly objective journalist to support a government program, with government funds. A big misstep, if it’s found out, but not so very far from what has been going on in journalism for years already.
I’ve been disgusted all along with the Bush crowd’s avid spinning and shallow PR – every bit as bad as the slick packaging of the Man From Hope.
Every time Bush appears, there’s a backdrop or slogan behind him – as though Americans are too stupid to understand a message that isn’t literally spelled out. The Dept. of Education had (perhaps still has) a revoltingly-corny schoolhouse facade with the NCLB slogan superimposed across their main office building.
What does this have to do with government? Why is govt. money being used at all to propagandize the public?
IMO it’s deceptive and hence unethical to be paid to argue a point and not disclose that one is being paid.
I also feel it’s much worse to use public money in such a manner. Some articles claim it’s against the law, I hope that’s true and people go to jail for this.
Right or wrong, it’s been standard practice at least since the start of WWII. You say “propaganda,” somebody else might say “public service announcement.”
Propaganda isn’t really a bad thing. Deep and passionate arguments are for the most part lost on the majority of Americans. Just because an initiative is developed by someone who belongs to a particular party doesn’t mean it exists on some plain that is separate from the American people, and is in some ways “evil” or “unclean.”
For example society in general felt that America was out of shape, so starting with Clinton IIRC we have seen Presidential initiatives in the form of advertising and the like that stress physical fitness. Now, this was a Clintonian construction as in it was his administration’s program (or maybe it was Bush, I don’t remember when these particular PSAs started) but as head President Clinton was expected to make decisions for us, simple as that. So he decided he wanted to stress physical fitness, and like every other decision he made for us (because that was his job, not ours) it cost something, and in the case of that initiative it cost advertising money to develop the commercials.
So I have no problem with Bush hiring someone as a spokesperson for any program, we’ve been doing it for years and while it is our money it isn’t our money to spend. That’s for Congress and the Executive to work out, that’s what a Representative Democracy is. Just because we paid it in doesn’t mean we can do a damn thing other than vote for different representation when we feel it is misspent.
Anyways it certainly isn’t immoral or illegal as long as the administration was paying the man as a spokesperson, and wasn’t paying him to influence his opinions as a journalist.
The person who we should have a problem with is the journalist. As a journalist he shouldn’t be a spokesman for anything to maintain his integrity, he chose to forego that, he wasn’t forced.
JFK was the first President to start a national fitness program, IIRC.
So, you would have been completely cool if Clinton had secretly used government funds to pay Washington pundits to shill Hillary’s health care plan, eh?
Quite the open-minded guy, I must say.
What else could he possibly say at this point? “I don’t actually like the No Child Left Behind program but I was willing to say I did because they paid me to.”