January 29 - 30, 2005 Weekend Edition

Conservative Commentators Moonlight As Prostitutes

By BILL PRESS
 

If you ever wondered why there were so many conservative commentators eager to defend the policies of the Bush administration, now you know: They were bought!

Armstrong Williams was the first one outed. After four years of singing the praises of President Bush’s education policies, the television and radio talk show host admitted he’d been paid $240,000 by the Department of Education to be the president’s stooge. In return, Williams agreed to make television appearances and write columns praising the president’s No Child Left Behind Act, especially as it related to minority families; to interview the Secretary of Education on his own cable show; and to encourage other black journalists to join him in singing Bush’s praises.

Maggie Gallagher was next. She has admitted accepting two checks — $21,000 from the Department of Health and Health Services and $20,000 from the Justice Department — for promoting, in print and on various media appearances, Bush’s policies on marriage. She also testified before Congress in support of Bush’s Initiative to Encourage Marriage. Families of soldiers killed in Iraq, by the way, receive a total payment of $12,000.

Shame on both of them. What they did is far worse than Dan Rather. He may not have done his homework, and he did rely on documents later proven to be fraudulent — but at least Rather didn’t accept money from the Kerry campaign or the Democratic National Committee to attack the president. Williams and Gallagher took bribes to defend him.

And both of them offered lame excuses. Williams argues that because he was not a big-time journalist, he didn’t realize it was wrong to prostitute himself. Is he serious? You don’t have to be the world heavyweight champ to know it’s wrong to take money to throw a fight. Besides, isn’t this the commentator who has always talking about “moral values?” Surely he knows the difference between right and wrong.

For her part, Gallagher says she would have disclosed her backdoor payments in her column if only she had thought about it, but she just plumb forgot. Now that is laugh-out-loud funny. Believe me, in this business, you know who’s signing your checks. It’s not something that just slips your mind.

So, shame on both of them. But shame on President Bush, too. Once Armstrong and Gallagher were caught with their hands in the cookie jar, he condemned the practice of paying commentators and ordered members of his administration to cease and desist. “All our Cabinet secretaries must realize that we will not be paying commentators to advance our agenda,” Bush told reporters. “Our agenda must be able to stand on its own two feet.”

But that begs the question. Who gave the orders to hire commentators in the first place? Believe me, it didn’t just happen. Williams and Gallagher didn’t find that money lying around on Pennsylvania Avenue. They were approached, they were offered, and they accepted. It was all part of a huge propaganda campaign on which the Bush administration spent $88 million in 2004: 128 percent more than the government spent promoting its own programs in 2000.

Surely the Bush administration doesn’t have to pay commentators to blow its horn. There are plenty of conservatives out there who will do it for free. But for the White House to pay, and for Williams and Gallagher to take the money, is equally odious — if not illegal.

At the very least, it shatters the implicit level of trust that must exist between television performers, like me, and television watchers, like you. While you may not agree with what the talking head is saying, you know — or should know — that, liberal or conservative, he’s speaking from his heart, and not from his wallet.

For violating that trust, Williams was immediately fired by Tribune Media Services, which distributes this column. That’s a good start. Williams and Gallagher should also be banned from any further appearances as columnist or commentator. Let them open up their own public relations firm and sell their services to the highest bidder. But any cable network that puts them back on the air as so-called “independent” analysts is as guilty as they are.

Of course, what everybody wants to know is: How many more media whores are out there? And who else is on the take? Nobody knows.

For now, there are only two things we know for sure. One, Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher aren’t the only ones. Two, Bush wouldn’t have stopped the practice if he hadn’t gotten caught.

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Bill Press is an award-winning radio talk show host and television commentator. He is the author of Spin This: All the Ways We Don’t Tell the Truth.  Press has received numerous awards for his work, including four Emmys and a Golden Mic Award. He was named Best Commentator of the Year by the Associated Press in 1992. Press earned a bachelor of arts degree in philosophy from Niagara University and a S.T.B. in theology from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. His latest book is Why Bush Must Go! Top Ten Reasons Why George Bush Doesn't Deserve a Second Term.  And his web page can be found at www.billpress.com.  

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