The rash of paid-off pundits preaching the President's agenda has a noticable difference in payoffs. Columnist Maggie Gallagher got only $40,000 taxpayer dollars to secretly promote the administration's agenda, while TV commentator Armstrong Williams got $240,000.
Rolling Stone suggests that amounts to how much exposure pundits could give to the administration. With Mr Williams, there was Sinclair Broadcast Group. He offered to work as an independent analyst, and the company got lots of high profile interviews -- with Administration officials Mr Williams was under contract to interview.
Mr Williams told Rolling Stone, "Sinclair brought me stuff that I did not have -- real numbers, where you can get the speaker of the house or the VP. On Sinclair, I was talking to millions of viewers a night."
Sinclair was not aware of Mr Williams' arrangement with the Bush adminstration at the time. But the producer who worked Mr Williams' interview on Sinclair stations with Education Secretary Rodney Paige told Rolling Stone it was "the worst piece of TV I've ever been associated with. You've seen softballs from Larry King? Well, this was softer. I told my boss it didn't even deserve to be broadcast, but they kept pushing me to put more of it on tape. In retrospect, it was so clearly propaganda."
Another ex-producer for Sinclair says that sort of thing fit in with the style of the broadcast company. He says he was ordered not to report any "bad news" out of Iraq. There were to be no reports of dead troops or how much the war cost.
Sinclair head honcho David Smith tells Rolling Stone, "We're in the center" politically and that "99.9% of the media is left of center."
Mr Smith promised an internal investigation of the Armstrong Williams scandal and his company's involvement with Mr Williams during the contract. But shortly after making the announcement, Mr Smith was a guest at an Inauguration Day reception at Mr William's home. (Rolling Stone)
No comments:
Post a Comment