There they go again. Yet another of George W’s government agencies has been caught playing the underhanded game of “Rent-a-Journalist!”
You might remember last year when it was revealed that Armstrong Williams, a right-wing commentator and radio talk-show host, had been taking payola from the Bush government. Through a PR firm, the education department had funneled a couple hundred thousand of our tax dollars to Williams in exchange for him touting Bush’s infamous “No Child Left Behind” program on his radio shows. You also might remember that, once the deal was exposed, George proclaimed that such payments were wrong, and, by gollies, he would stop such shenanigans.
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Now, however, we learn that Bush’s Office of Cuba Broadcasting has also been running a corral of journalists since 2001. The Miami Herald reveals that 10 South Florida reporters and TV personalities have been receiving thousands of dollars in government funds to provide anti-Castro commentaries for this agency’s broadcast’s into Cuba.
Amazingly, a couple of the recipient reporters say that, since they personally oppose Castro, they see nothing wrong with cashing Bush’s checks. Maybe they should go to class with a media ethics professor, who points out that, “it’s all about credibility and independence. If you consider yourself a journalist, then it seems to me it’s an obvious conflict of interest to take government dollars.”
Maybe Bush & Company should take the professor’s class as well. A spokesman for Bush’s International Broadcasting Bureau, which oversees the anti-Castro division, says that while the bureau does background checks on the journalists it pays, it has no ethics code on proper journalistic behavior.
This is Jim Hightower saying… Ethics seems to be the missing link for the entire Bushite Regime, which will take any and all shortcuts to advance their ideological agenda. You wouldn’t think they’d need a class to teach them that payola is wrong – but there they are.
Sources:
“U.S. Paid 10 Journalists For Anti-Castro Reports,” The New York Times, September 9, 2006.
“10 Miami Journalists Take Pay,” Miami Herald, September 8, 2006.
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