more media payoffs

[blackumbrella]

ANOTHER COLUMNIST WAS PAID TO PROMOTE BUSH PROPOSAL
Tue Jan 25 2005 20:13:59 ET

In 2002, syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher repeatedly defended President Bush's push for a $300 million initiative encouraging marriage as a way of strengthening families.

But Gallagher failed to mention that she had a $21,500 contract with the Department of Health and Human Services to help promote the president's proposal, reveals Howard Kurtz in Wednesday runs of the WASHINGTON POST.

"The Bush marriage initiative would emphasize the importance of marriage to poor couples" and "educate teens on the value of delaying childbearing until marriage," she wrote in National Review Online, for example, adding that this could "carry big payoffs down the road for taxpayers and children."

Gallagher explains to Kurtz: "Did I violate journalistic ethics by not disclosing it? 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.

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."

http://drudgereport.com/flash3mg.htm

 

[ValuJet]

...

 

[It's On A Slab]

In fairness to our Rush-ian friends: Just because Matt Drudge

ANOTHER COLUMNIST WAS PAID TO PROMOTE BUSH PROPOSAL
Tue Jan 25 2005 20:13:59 ET




http://drudgereport.com/flash3mg.htm

posts it doesn't mean that it's so.

I haven't seen any independent corroboration of this story....something that should be done for anything Drudge lists as "developing".

If this is true, I'd lay good money that FoxNews has a lot of Federal grants floating around the studio.

 

[NYBamaFan]

Well, I have always known about government subsidies for educational programing, but this seems questionable. What, exactly, was she paid for? I doubt that she was paid to do this piece, as that would approach criminal misappropriation of government funds...

 

[Queasy1]

Apparently, this is different than the Armstrong Williams case. Ms. Gallagher responds:

I was not paid to promote marriage. I was paid to produce particular research and writing products (articles, brochures, presentations), which I produced. My lifelong experience in marriage research, public education and advocacy is the reason HHS hired me.

But the real truth is that it never occurred to me. On reflection, I think Howard is right. I should have disclosed a government contract when I later wrote about the Bush marriage initiative. I would have, if I had remembered it. My apologies to my readers.

So, she wasn't paid to use her column space to promote the HHS message.

Here is the full Kurtz report. I think Drudge misinterpreted it.

Gallagher failed to mention that she had a $21,500 contract with the Department of Health and Human Services to help promote the president's proposal. Her work under the contract, which ran from January through October 2002, included drafting a magazine article for the HHS official overseeing the initiative, writing brochures for the program and conducting a briefing for department officials. ...

Gallagher received an additional $20,000 from the Bush administration in 2002 and 2003 for writing a report, titled "Can Government Strengthen Marriage?", for a private organization called the National Fatherhood Initiative. That report, published last year, was funded by a Justice Department grant, said NFI spokesman Vincent DiCaro. Gallagher said she was "aware vaguely" that her work was federally funded. ...

"I don't see any comparison between what has been alleged with Armstrong Williams and what we did with Maggie Gallagher," said Horn, who founded the National Fatherhood Initiative before entering government. "We didn't pay her to write columns. We didn't pay her to promote the president's healthy marriage initiative at all. What we wanted to do was use her expertise."

 

[blackumbrella]

more follow up

"It is not uncommon for researchers, scholars, or experts to get paid by the government to do work relating to their field of expertise. Nor is it considered unethical or shady: if anything, government funded work is considered a mark of an expert's respectability. Until today, researchers and scholars have not generally been expected to disclose a government-funded research project in the past, when they later wrote about their field of expertise in the popular press or in scholarly journals.

"For these reasons, it simply never occurred to me there was a need to disclose this information. I certainly had no intention or motive to hide my work from anyone. As a journalist, however, when the question is raised 'Should you have disclosed?' the answer is always, yes. It was a mistake on my part not to have disclosed any government contract. It will not happen again."

In response, Kurtz told E&P: "It's too bad that Maggie Gallagher, in the process of apologizing for her mistake, has seen fit to blame the messenger. My story made quite clear that her work at HHS included writing brochures for the President's marriage initiative, ghostwriting a magazine article for a top official, and briefing other department officials on the issue. That sure sounds like promotion to me, but none of this would be a media controversy had Ms. Gallagher disclosed the contract in her writing trumpeting the Bush marriage plan."

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000778178

 

[Queasy1]

Link Gallagher got money from the Clinton administration for doing similar work.

Gallagher got another $20,000 — part of which was approved while President Clinton was still in office — from a private organization called the National Fatherhood Initiative, using money from a Justice Department grant. For that 2001 grant, she wrote a report on the institution of marriage, entitled "Can Government Strengthen Marriage?"

So, in Gallagher's case at least, it sounds like a conflict of interest between being a paid columnist and writing reports and doing research for the government. I'm sure there are many other columnists going way way back that have done similar.