The White House is trying to sweep Armstrong Williams under the rug as
an isolated incident:
WASHINGTON Jan 10, 2005 -- The White House said Monday that the case of the Education Department paying a conservative commentator to plug its policies was an isolated incident, not a practice widely used by the Bush administration.
With the Education Department still defending its $240,000 contract with syndicated columnist and TV personality Armstrong Williams, White House spokesman Scott McClellan was cautious in choosing his comments.
"Questions have been raised about that arrangement, it ought to be looked into, and there are ways to look into matters of that nature," McClellan said. The spokesman did not say precisely who should look into it, and stopped short of backing an inquiry by the department's inspector-general, as some lawmakers have sought. He noted that department lawyers have taken up the matter.
The Government Accountability Office is already investigating whether the department illegally promoted the No Child Left Behind law with a video that looks like a news story but fails to make clear the reporter involved was paid by the government. The GAO is also reviewing why the department paid for rankings of how reporters are covering the law.
The only way that Armstrong Williams can be considered an isolated incident is that he is the rare crack in the matrix of the Republican Noise Machine that actually is now visible to the public. Even though the Bush administration has been caught doing this
on three other occasions in just the last eight months, and even though there is a legion of well-heeled conservative spokespeople masquerading as "non-partisans" who are bankrolled by conservative foundations and who dominate the national media (see
here and
here), Republicans have still managed to spread a "biased liberal media" narrative around the country to the point where it has become conventional wisdom (see
here). This preposterous situation, where conservatives completely dominate the news media while simultaneously convincing the American public that the media is dominated by a so-called "liberal elite" can be dealt a significant blow if we take immediate media action on talk shows, newspaper columns and other forms of public access to point out that there is nothing uncommon about Armstrong Williams whatsoever. To use a crude analogy, we must attempt to use the crack in the matrix represented by the Armstrong Williams incident to reveal to the public that the matrix does, in fact, exist.
The FOIA requests underway on this matter are an excellent piece of work, but they are not enough. This is perhaps the best chance we have ever had to hold the Republican Noise Machine up to public scrutiny and do real damage to the "liberal media" narrative. We must take immediate action on this story
- We must make it clear that the issue is not just the White House paying supposedly "independent" voice to spread propaganda. Specifically, we must make it clear that there is little difference between what the Bush administration did with Armstrong Williams and what radical conservative think tanks and money-losing radical conservative journals do in hiring paid spokespeople to act as apparently "non-partisan" experts on national policy, but who end up simply espousing flat-earth conservative talking points across the media. This is such a common thing for conservatives to do that it probably did not even occur to them that it is illegal to do it with public funds.
- We must be willing to use frames like "Republican Noise Machine," in making these charges in order to create a way for people to talk and think about this phenomenon.
- We must reply to all of the existing stories on Armstrong Williams in every new outlet with letters to the editor saying as much.
- These charges must be backed up with fact sheets to support our statements.
- Democratic columnists, spokespeople and elected officials need complete access to all of this information themselves so that they can write and speak cogently about this. We should also urge them to speak about this, so that every time a conservative pundit opens his or her mouth something is willing to respond "who paid you to say that?"
We do not have a large window on this story, and I have little doubt that many people with a great deal of influence over our national discourse would prefer to see it swept under the rug. However, if we can start the ball rolling on this story before the FOIA requests even come out, it could have a tremendous snowballing effect. We need to act now.
