USATODAY.com – Education Dept. paid commentator to promote law: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-01-06-williams-whitehouse_x.htm
Well, this is excellent. Not only does Armstrong Williams take the $240k from the Bush administration to promote one of their bass-ackward policies on his newsbroadcast, he publicly advocates that other black conservative broadcasters do the same.
Note: when asked to comment, Ketchum PR, the government’s PR counsel, referred questions to the Department of Education. Let me say that again: The voice of this issue did a hand-off. Hot potato, indeed.
I have such a difficult time with this sort of thing, mostly because I deal with the pay-to-play ad/editorial environment every day. And that is, of course, where the slippery slope began; editorial desks implicitly refusing editorial space on organizations with no advertising history. It’s a very short leap from there to Williams’ slap in the face of public policy media.
Somehow, and I’ll say it’s probably due to the ever-increasing competition for advertising and editorial space in fixed-format media, ad history became the bar or standard by which editorial participation was measured. Williams blatant disregard for this ethical boundary is proof that we’ve come to the next age of media hucksterism: the Advertorial is the standard, and it’s more OK than not anymore.