FCC Orders Probe of
Williams-Bush Deal
ABC News
AP
WASHINGTON Jan 14, 2005
WASHINGTON Jan 14, 2005 — The chairman of the Federal
Communications Commission ordered an investigation Friday into
whether conservative commentator Armstrong Williams broke the law
by failing to disclose he was paid by the Bush administration to
plug the president's education agenda.
The investigation relates to provisions that require
disclosure of such arrangements, FCC Chairman Michael Powell said
in a brief statement.
Also Friday, two Democratic senators asked the Government
Accountability Office, Congress' investigative arm, to review
whether any other federal agencies have paid commentators to
support the administration's agenda.
Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asked the
Government Accountability Office to investigate whether the
Education Department's payment to Williams violated a ban on
propaganda and, if so, to determine who should be held
accountable.
"There are real questions whether this is a real expenditure,"
Dorgan said in an interview. "This has all the makings of
political payola."
The FCC and GAO probes are the latest in a growing controversy
over Williams' deal with the Education Department to promote the
No Child Left Behind Act.
Williams was paid $240,000 as part of at least a $1.3 million
commitment the department had with a public relations firm,
Ketchum. Williams produced ads with Education Secretary Rod Paige
to promote the controversial law.
He was also hired to provide media time to Paige and to
persuade other blacks in media to talk about the sweeping
education reforms, records show.
On Thursday, Paige announced his department had opened an
internal review. Democratic and Republican members of a Senate
panel that oversees education funding demanded department records
related to the case.
President Bush, in an interview published Friday in USA Today,
said, "The Cabinet needs to take a good look and make sure this
kind of thing doesn't happen again."
Both Williams, a nationally syndicated radio, TV and print
personality, and Paige maintain their arrangement was legal.
Williams has acknowledged it was an "obvious conflict of
interest" to accept money and then support the education law in
his weekly newspaper column.
In an op-ed posted on the Web site for the industry magazine,
PRWeek, Ketchum chief executive office Ray Kotcher said the firm
agreed that Williams was wrong for not having disclosed the
information.
"We agree, particularly because with government contracts, the
public has a right to know about the relationship that
spokespeople may have to the issues or government agency they
represent," Kotcher wrote.
He also said Ketchum, with help from an outside firm, has
started a review of all its federal contracts in an effort that
would "surely yield recommendations to improve transparency."
The announcement from Powell, a Republican, came as FCC
officials said thousands of complaints had come into the agency
regarding Williams. No precise number was available Friday. Free
Press, a media reform advocacy group, had said it was forwarding
more than 12,000 complaints to the FCC.
"In this era of huge corporate media, it is becoming harder
and harder to tell the difference between news and entertainment,
to differentiate between information and propaganda," FCC
Commissioner Michael Copps, a Democrat, said Friday.
An investigation also could extend to the stations that
carried the program, if the broadcaster knew of Williams'
arrangement but did not make that clear to viewers, aides to FCC
Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, a Democrat, have said.
Powell on Friday also ordered the FCC to investigate a radio
station programmer in Buffalo, N.Y., who was fired by Entercom
Communications Corp. for breaking the station's rules against
taking gifts from business contacts.
Both that incident and the Williams case were being
investigated at the FCC for possible violations of so-called
"payola" statutes, Powell said. The law requires disclosure of
any payment or gift for airing any material for broadcast, such
as a radio disc jockey being paid to play a particular
recording.
In the GAO request, Dorgan and Wyden also asked for a
government-wide review of any payments to journalists,
commentators or talk show hosts to promote the administration's
policies.
Associated Press writer Ben Feller contributed to this
report.
On the Net:
FCC payola information page:
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