It's The Disclosure, Stupid (Pundits on the Take/Maggie Gallagher)

[Plaid Adder]

From the Washington Post, we learn of another pundit on the take:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36545-2005Jan25.html

Writer Backing Bush Plan had Gotten Federal Contract

True to form, the Bush administration is apparently paying women less than men to do the same work: Maggie Gallagher only got a total of $41,000 from Health and Human Services to work on pushing Bush's creepy marriage-bounty initiative. (You know, paying people to get married. No, no, not US people. Straight people.) She also went around pushing the Constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, but so far as we know she just did that for the sheer joy of it.

Gallagher points out, correctly, that her deal with the devil is not as blatant as Williams', since nobody has yet found a contract actually specifying that she is required to flog the program in her column and her television appearances. What she does have in common with Williams is that she is a conservative pundit who is essentially being subsidized with federal money in the form of these grants she's been given to help develop and market Bush initatives--and who has been writing about government programs without disclosing the fact that she is on the government payroll.

OK, so her deal with the Bush government wasn't *literally* a quid pro quo. It's still whoring, and it's still corrupt, and it's still a big fucking problem. Here's why.

It's the failure to disclose, in Gallagher's case, that makes this all so insidious. You can read plenty of op-eds all over the place from people who clearly have material reasons to be biased in favor of whatever 'initiative' they're flogging, but that material reason is traditionally disclosed either in the column or in the byline. You know, you'll read a piece praising Bush's "Clear Skies Initiative" and then see down at the bottom a little bio line that says "John Q. Pundit is the vice-president of the Corporate Polluters' Liberation Front." And so you know that since John Q. Pundit is a professional shill for corporate polluters, his position on the benefits of gutting EPA regulations has probably not been arrived at through distinterested contemplation upon the question of how best to promote the welfare of mankind.

By concealing the material connection between themselves and the government for whom they whore, these pundits are creating a false appearance of objectivity which they then use to try to convince readers that they are actually considering the merits of the issue before taking a position, instead of manipulating their arguments in order to arrive at the conclusion that they are being paid to reach. In Gallagher's case, for instance, the financial connection made it put-near impossible that she would ever take a position *against* one of Bush's proposals, no matter how outlandish they got, because that would jeopardize one of her major sources of income. And this is why it is a problem that conservative pundits are being subsidized by the federal government--with the tax dollars of people like me, who loathe and despise all of these 'initiatives.' Essentially, the Bush administration is trying to create the perception that there has been what all the pundits like to call a spontaneous 'sea-change' of public opinion, when in fact they are simply engaged in a vast marketing campaign. Suddenly all these people are popping up in newspapers all over the country saying, "Hey! Privatizing Social Security will make us all richer!" After a while, you might start thinking, hey, so many published 'experts' believe this, there must be *something* to it...unless you knew that all of these 'experts' are feeding at the government trough.

And, you know, if you want to be a paid shill, fine, but if you try to mislead people into believing that you are a free agent, then yes, that's a violation of journalistic ethics. I say this because Maggie Gallagher is apparently confused about whether what she did was wrong, and is asking for our opinions on the subject:

"Did I violate journalistic ethics by not disclosing it?" Gallagher said yesterday. "I don't know. You tell me." She said she would have "been happy to tell anyone who called me" about the contract but that "frankly, it never occurred to me" to disclose it.

The National Review, apparently, has given her a slap on the wrist for sounding that crass, but has no plans to fire her:

National Review Editor Rich Lowry said of the HHS contract: "We would have preferred that she told us, and we would have disclosed it in her bio."..."We did not know about the contract," spokeswoman Kathie Kerr said. "We would have probably liked to have known." But, Kerr said, "this is what we hired Maggie to write about. It probably wouldn't have changed our mind to distribute it."

Well, that's nice to know about the National Review: they're A-OK with printing taxpayer-funded state propaganda. Well, OK, I guess we knew that already.

Nobody owns me,

The Plaid Adder

[sam sarrha]

1. Yes !! you violated every journalistic ethic.. that makes you a WHORE !!

since you asked, ..You are a Whore, try to dance around that, bitch,...:spank:


and that mekes Bu$h a PIMP, and a Theif for spending our tax money on prapaganda to Media Whores..

[JHB]

2. "Did I violate journalistic ethics by not disclosing it?"

"Did I violate journalistic ethics by not disclosing it?" Gallagher said yesterday. "I don't know. You tell me."

OK, I'll bite. Yes, you did. Frankly, it's so blindingly obvious you did I'm shocked -- SHOCKED! -- that you can't tell.

She said she would have "been happy to tell anyone who called me" about the contract but that "frankly, it never occurred to me" to disclose it.

It's one of the dividing lines between a hack and a journalist. Guess which side you're on.

[blm]

3. The big news you WON'T hear about Bush's marriage program is that it's

based on RevMoon's marriage programs and many involved in Moon's marriage seminars are working with the administration.