Bush Administration Paid Columnists Tax Dollars for Endorsements
This sees like a big deal to me, but it doesn’t seem to be getting much play in the media. It appears that the Bush Administration has paid at least three columnists to endorse the No Child Left Behind initiative. There is a summary article on Wikipedia and an article on on CNN.com.
Rather than just going into a rant about this, though, I’d really like to give some though to the ethics of this. I’m having a hard time resolving exactly what to think here, frankly. I could see this being anywhere from “perfectly okay” all the way to “hideously unethical” and I haven’t really decided which.
On one hand, the government spends tax dollars all the time promoting its policies. They public health brochures and run television ads to recruit for the Army. One could look at this as just another part of the world of government public relations.
On the other hand, the administration here is not going through normal means to promote their agenda here, they’re paying supposedly-objective third-party columnists (albeit right-wing ones). Also, there’s this:
All three columnists failed to disclose to their readers their relationships with the administration.
It appears that there will be an inquiry into this, as the Democrats will surely turn it into a scandal regardless. The question is: should this be a big deal, or not? The legality of the situation has not yet fully been determined, and that will certainly determine the “big dealness” of it, to first order. But if legal, is this something that we should be concerned about?