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Armstrong Williams, a prominent conservative commentator who was a protégé
of Senator Strom Thurmond and Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court,
acknowledged yesterday that he was paid $240,000 by the Department of Education
to promote its initiatives on his syndicated television program and to other
African-Americans in the news media.
The disclosure of the payment set off a storm of criticism from Democrats
over the Bush administration's spending to promote its policies to the public.
According to a copy of the contract provided by the department yesterday, Mr.
Williams, who also runs a small public relations firm and until yesterday wrote
a syndicated newspaper column, was required to broadcast two one-minute
advertisements in which Education Secretary Rod Paige extolled the merits of
its national standards program, No Child Left Behind.
But the arrangement, which started in late 2003 and was first reported
yesterday by USA Today, also stipulated that a public relations firm hired by
the department would "arrange for Mr. Williams to regularly comment on
N.C.L.B. during the course of his broadcasts," that "Secretary Paige
and other department officials shall have the option of appearing from time to
time as studio guests," and that "Mr. Williams shall utilize his
long-term working relationships with '
Mr. Williams, 45, apologized yesterday for blurring his roles as an
independent commentator and a paid promoter. "This is a great lesson to
me," he told Paul Begala of CNN, who himself has
an off-air job as a paid Democratic political consultant but discloses both
roles.
Mr. Williams declined to blame the department for his woes. "I can
easily sit here and criticize the administration," he said. "But I
got my own problems today, and that is what I am trying to deal with."
The disclosure about the arrangement coincides with a decision by the
Government Accountability Office that the administration had violated a law
against unauthorized federal propaganda by distributing television news
segments that promoted drug enforcement policies without identifying their
origin. More than 300 news programs reaching more than 22 million households
broadcast the segments. The accountability office made a similar ruling in May
about news segments promoting Medicare policies, and the Drug Enforcement
Agency stopped distributing the segments then.
In a statement, the Department of Education said yesterday that the deal was
an appropriate part of its efforts to explain its policy to "minority
parents." The statement said: "The contract paid to provide the
straightforward distribution of information about the department's mission and
N.C.L.B. - a permissible use of taxpayer funds."
John Gibbons, a spokesman for the department, said Mr. Williams was the only
broadcaster or journalist paid to promote the policy. Mr. Williams and
department officials said the department's payments to its public relations
contractor, Ketchum, ran to $1 million.
House Democrats including the minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, and
Representative George Miller, senior minority member of the Education and
Workforce Committee, both of California, released a letter to the president
suggesting "a deliberate pattern of behavior by your administration to
deceive the public and the media in an effort to further your policy
objectives" and urging disclosure of "all past and ongoing efforts to
engage in covert propaganda."
Questioned about the arrangement, Scott McClellan, a spokesman for the
president, referred reporters to the Department of Education.
In an interview, Mr. Miller called the release of the news segments and the
payments to Mr. Williams part of "a very dangerous practice that deceives
the public" by concealing the role of taxpayer dollars in promoting
partisan policies. "Are they funding propaganda?" he asked. "Are
they funding money to their friends?"
But public relations executives said that the government distribution of
prepared news segments without on-air disclosures of their origin was a
bipartisan practice that predated the Bush administration.
"The Clinton administration was probably even more active than the Bush
administration" in distributing news segments promoting its policies, said
Laurence Moskowitz, chairman and chief executive of Medialink, a major producer of promotional news segments.
After the Government Accountability Office decision last spring, he said, his
firm began advising government clients to disclose each tape's nature in its
script.
The arrangement with Mr. Williams "is stupid, it is unseemly, and it is
tacky," said Jonah Goldberg, a contributing editor at the conservative
National Review.
The National Association of Black Journalists criticized the administration
and Mr. Williams alike yesterday, calling on newspapers that use his column and
television stations that use his commentary to "drop him
immediately."
"I thought we in the media were supposed to be watchdogs, not lapdogs,"
Bryan Monroe, an official of the black journalists' group and an assistant vice
president at Knight Ridder, said in the statement.
In an interview, Mr. Williams said his mistake was thinking like a
businessman, without worrying enough about journalistic ethics. He began his
career in politics as an aide to Mr. Thurmond of
After that, he said, he continued to operate a small public relations firm,
Graham Williams, with his business partner Stedman Graham, who eventually
became known as the partner of Oprah Winfrey and left the business. Aside from
the Department of Education, Mr. Williams said, his clients were all private
businesses. With about five employees, he said, his company's revenue runs to
about $300,000 a year at most, and last year ended in a loss.
But then he also began writing his newspaper column, syndicated by Tribune
Media Services, which dropped him yesterday. He said about 50 papers ran the
column. He also began broadcasting a syndicated conservative talk radio show
that eventually faded away. And more recently he began a syndicated
conservative television show, "The Right Side," and another series
for a fledgling African-American cable channel, TV One.
Mr. Armstrong said his news show ran on cable channels including Dr. Jerry Falwell's Liberty Television, Sky Angel television, the
Christian Television Network and a handful of local stations. Yesterday, Mr.
Williams was counting the lessons learned. "I have
realized, you know what? I am part of this media elite club, and I have
to be more responsible."
Correction:
An article on Saturday about the disclosure that the Education
Department paid the conservative commentator Armstrong Williams to promote its
initiatives referred incorrectly to Paul Begala, the
co-host of CNN's "Crossfire," who interviewed him about the
arrangement. Mr. Begala is a Democrat and a paid
consultant to campaigns outside the United States, and he was an unpaid adviser
to John Kerry's presidential campaign, but he is not a paid consultant to
Democratic causes.
In some copies, the article misstated the name of the agency that had
distributed television news segments to promote the administration's drug
enforcement policies, a practice the Government
Accountability Office said was illegal. It is the Office of National Drug
Control Policy, not the Drug Enforcement Agency.