Dept of Education report on reporter payola
The federal Department of Education paid education-advocacy groups that produced Op-Ed columns, ads, and other material, according to a new report issued by the DOE's Inspector General.
This means that former Tribune Media Services (TMS) columnist Armstrong Williams wasn't the only person writing for newspapers while receiving DOE money.
The report said The Dallas Morning News, The Sacramento (Calif.) Bee, the Mobile (Ala.) Register, and The Grand Island (Neb.) Independent were among the papers that published Op-Eds by authors who failed to disclose they were receiving DOE money. Separately, the office of Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) determined that additional opinion articles ran in papers such as The New York Sun.
The report makes clear that this was not just a one time deal, that people where regularly paid for this. At least three people where paid for articles that where reported as appearing 11 different papers, plus other material that did not state that it was paid for by the government.
Garcini and Walsh did not disclose in their columns that their organizations had received DOE money, according to the report. But the Inspector General said the paid-for material did not constitute covert propaganda because the DOE would have had to willingly mislead the public.
Miller disagrees with that assessment. "The department is trying to define itself out of trouble by setting the bar very high for what constitutes covert propaganda," Miller said in a statement. "But on multiple occasions, education groups used taxpayer money -- unbeknownst to taxpayers -- to promote controversial federal policies. The department allowed this egregious use of taxpayer dollars to continue with such consistency that it cannot now claim that it was ignorant of the practice. Either the department is grossly incompetent when it comes to awarding grants and contracts, or it is misleading investigators and engaging in a cover up."
The Inspector General did conclude that it was improper for organizations to use DOE grant money to produce and disseminate public materials without including a disclaimer about funding, and said the appropriate course of action is to recover grant monies paid to these groups.
I pretty much agree with Miller on this. The way the Inspector General took the law would just about preclude anybody from ever being found guilty. The Inspector General's posistion seems to be that because the contracts that paid for the articles did not state that they had to hide that they where paid for by the government, they don't count.
Jay