In a blistering report, the investigators from the Government Accountability Office charged the administration had bought favorable news coverage of President Bush’s education policies, made payments to the conservative commentator Armstrong Williams and hired a public relations company to analyze media perceptions of the Republican Party.
The contract with Williams and the general contours of the public relations campaign had been known for months. The report provided the first definitive ruling on the legality of the activities, the New York Times said Saturday.
This has been the week for neo-cons vs. the Law, hasn’t it?
Lawyers from the accountability office, an independent nonpartisan arm of Congress, found that the administration systematically analyzed news articles to see if they carried the message, “The Bush administration/the GOP is committed to education.”
The auditors declared: “We see no use for such information except for partisan political purposes.”
The TIMES article has more detail; but, the site requires “registration” which can be frustrating. If you have the time, it’s here.
Thanks, Khalil
Man-oh-man, it’s getting so you can’t even trust politicians anymore.
A useful site working against registration and giving free information is bugmenot.com
This isn’t new, but a bit of decent discussion on the subject, also from the New York Times (but you don’t need a registration to read from this site).
Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged Television News
I’m still waiting for that Valerie Plame thing to produce a very nice indictment.
ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease!
Paul,
Are you bothered at all that OUR TAX DOLLARS were secretly used to propagandize our own citizens?
HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of our tax dollars?!?!
I find it offensive as an American and a tax payer. Many people who know about these things say it is also criminal. (If it isn’t, it should be!)
Anybody who yawns there way through this scandal can be serious about limited government or fiscal restraint.
I don’t believe most informed people think neocons have a franchise on being unethical. But they do seem to be “setting the bar” the last few years.
It’s been apparent for a spell that the right wing has resumed the mantle of political correctness. Frankly, I hadn’t realized that “neocon” had fallen out of favor. After all, it was the PNAC think tank that popularized the term during early Bush daze as a neologism for Republikans with contempt for traditional American conservatism and RINO’s — Republicans In Name Only.
I say “resume” because, after all, it was McCarthyite days for the Feds back in 1949 when the War Department was renamed the Department of Defense. And hucksters and newspeak assumed prominence guiding PR for both flavors of institutional political parties.
>>cuz that’s the impression left when you call everything bad “neocon”.
Everything bad is not “neocon”, but it’s becoming painfully clear as the scandals fall like rain during the monsoon season, that everything “neocon” is bad.
The Founding Fathers are turning over in their graves that these scandalous vermin call themselves “Americans”.
Oh well, “we” voted Dumbya into office. “We” are getting just what “we” asked for, it seem.
Just another case of Bush using America’s “credit card” to further the agenda of the corrupted Rightwing. It’s amazing how easy it is to fix problems when you can simply throw newly printed money at them. I don’t even want a Democrat to win the next election so that the Republicans are forced to “stew” in the mess that’s being created from all their “short term fixes”.
So when did the GAO replace the Judicial Branch? The GAO can’t “rule’ an action legal or illegal; they can only offer opinion as lawyers.
If buying “favorable coverage” violates some ethical standard, then the liberals in congress should vote against government funding of PBS and NPR.