Bushco Buying News with Taxpayer Money Ruled Illegal
by Robert Pear, New York Times
This
story arrived on the Blog for Iowa desk (thanks to Christina Butts in
Des Moines) just in time for the last day of our Focus on Media
Week. Friday, federal auditors ruled that the Bush
Administration's purchasing of favorable news coverage (using the
taxpayers' money) was illegal and that it constituted “covert
propaganda.” Well, duh. Alas, no penalty. Of course
not. Never for the Bush junta. Here's an excerpt from the
New York Times.
Federal
auditors said on Friday that the Bush administration violated the law
by buying favorable news coverage of [Bush's] education policies, by
making payments to the conservative commentator Armstrong Williams and
by hiring a public relations company to analyze media perceptions of
the Republican Party.
In a
blistering report, the investigators, from the Government
Accountability Office, said the administration had disseminated “covert
propaganda” in the United States, in violation of a statutory ban….
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. Engaging in a purely political activity
such as this is not a proper use of appropriated funds.”
(Click here to read the complete article.)
Blog For Iowa 