Category: Media Ethics

Buying Journalists: A 70-Year Tradition of Dishonor and Corruption

With all the news about Armstrong Williams and other paid lobbyists masquerading as pundits, it’s important to note that this disgusting practice has been going on for years, both in industry and in government.

All the way back to 1936 and 1937, Hill & Knowlton was paying journalists to write favorable stories for its steel-industry clients, as chronicled in the new book, The Voice of Business: Hill & Knowlton and Postwar Public Relations, by Karen S. Miller (The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill and London, 1999), and reported by Eveline Lubbers of Spinwatch.

She writes:

Hill and Knowlton sponsored antiunion messages appearing in the news media. George Sokolsky, a columnist for the New York Herald Tribune and periodicals such as the Atlantic Monthly received $28,599 from H&K from June 1936 to February 1938, chiefly for consultation to the American Iron and Steel Institute. When writing against the steelworkers union, his articles failed to mention his connection to H&K or the Institute.

A decade later, the New York Times on a Pulitzer for its post-Hiroshima reportage–a series of articles lauding the nuclear program, written by William Laurence.

Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, along with her brother David, are calling for the Times to be stripped of its Pulitzer, because…

It turns out that William L. Laurence was not only receiving a salary from The New York Times. He was also on the payroll of the War Department. In March 1945, General Leslie Groves had held a secret meeting at The New York Times with Laurence to offer him a job writing press releases for the Manhattan Project, the U.S. program to develop atomic weapons. The intent, according to the Times, was “to explain the intricacies of the atomic bomb’s operating principles in laymen’s language.” Laurence also helped write statements on the bomb for President Truman and Secretary of War Henry Stimson.

(And for those who might accuse me of an anti-GOP bias, please note that this was during the Democratic administration of Harry Truman.)

Censors as Well as Spinners

Meanwhile, another disturbing trend: government policy wonks are inviting large corporate interests–or bureaucrats who came through the revolving door and used to work for the industries they’re supposed to regulate–to edit repots before they’re made public. We saw this in the widely-reported story about White House staffer Philip Cooney editing out “negative” references (i.e., those that gave credence to the idea that global warming is a serious problem).

Turns out similar things are going on at the international level, in a climate change report prepared for the G8 summit that not only removed unfavorable references but presented nuclear power (the worst energy generation system ever invented, IMHO) as the shining knight of sustainability. Eeeeew!

But wait–there’s more! Can you believe that Andrew Gallagher, the spokesperson for West Virginia’s Environmental Protection department, had to run a press release on DuPont’s toxic emissions by the company first? And that he first softened the statement and then withdrew it entirely as a result? And that it was official state policy to give DuPont a shot at all such materials before their release?

And let’s not forget the US Department of Labor’s blatant attempt to help push through the CAFTA agreement by censoring its own contractor’s report on working conditions in Central America.

Do we have a problem with foxes in the henhouse, or what?

Note: I discovered all these stories reading one of my favorite blogs, “The Weekly Spin.”
I especially like it because it’s available in e-mail form. Sign up or read on line at

https://www.prwatch.org/

Lawrence O’Donnell claims in the Huffington Post https://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/lawrence-odonnell/rove-blew-cia-agents-cov_3556.html (Ariana Huffington’s open blog) that Bush’s senior strategist and Chief of Staff Karl Rove was the leaker who blew CIA agent Valerie Plame’s cover–an apparent act of revenge after her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, was asked, in the run-up to the Iraq war, to investigate claims that Iraq was buying weapons-grade uranium from Niger. Wilson found no truth in the allegations, said so publicly, and then conservative columnist Robert Novak put Plame’s name and true occupation in his column. And that he, O’Donnell, has known this for some time.

His documentation is a bit thin, but he says it will be in the next Newsweek, now that Time magazine has turned over reporter Matthew Cooper’s sources, after the Supreme Court declined to give reporters protection.

A lot of permutations here:

1. Let’s start with the most obvious: revealing the name of a CIA agent is a federal crime, and rightly so–it puts the operative’s life in danger, and endangers others who may have had dealings with the operative. Coming from a White House Chief of Staff, it could conceivably be considered an act of treason, a very high crime indeed.

2. The Administration attitude of “don’t tell us anything unless you can tell us good news, on the party line” is suicidal and homicidal. This is part of how we got into the Iraq mess in the first place–because when the top strategists received reports that weren’t what they wanted to hear–that Saddam had nothing to know with 911, that he wasn’t buying uranium, that he no longer had WMDs, and that the war would not be winnable–they either ignored them, doctored them, or excerpted the small parts that lent themselves to “positive” spin.

3. The Supreme Court ruling was on Matthew Cooper from time and Judith Miller from the New York times–neither of whom actually used the news leak in their reportage. If you’re going to investigate anyone, why not Novak, who actually wrote the column? And it’s particularly odd that the goon squad went after Judith Miller, who was perhaps the most influential cheerleader for the war, and whose failure to verify was so embarrassing that the Times eventually–two years late–issued an apology to its readers about misleading them on the validity of the pro-war arguments.

4. Meanwhile, the war drums are beating again. Having made a complete mess of Iraq, they’re now looking at Iran. I have to wonder whether the stories about Iran’s new president and his possible membership in the terrorist group that kidnapped 20 Americans in 1979 is another disinformation campaign. I believe it was the Times that ran the allegation, but also ran interviews with two of the known hostage takers who said the guy hadn’t been involved, though he’d asked to join them.

5. And let’s not forget the departure of Sandra Day O’Connor opens a fight for the lifeblood of this country. If that seat goes to a radical-right head-in-the-sand friend of GWB such as torture apologist (and now Attorney General) Antonio Gonzales, it’ll be time to make sure your passport is in order. And time to reread Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Don’t think it can’t happen here.

If the Rove allegation is true, this is yet another reason to stop cooperating with this government. It means the President either knew or should have known. International law, and the Watergate precedent in our own country, both show clearly that the chief executive can be held responsible for the actions of subordinates. Of course, the same principle should apply with the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo torture, among other abuses.

It was only a few months ago that the people of the Ukraine brought down their government and demanded a new election, with far less cause than we have here.

The real scandal of the Newsweek incident isn’t that the magazine issued a retraction. It’s the incredible pressure brought to bear by the White House and the Pentagon to stifle dissent and cover up problems. Big problems. And it’s the cowardice of American mainstream journalism in he face of that pressure.

Earlier this week, a query from a journalist crossed my desk:

“I’m looking for experts to comment on the issues surrounding this story, including, but not limited to: 1) The White House says the apology is not enough and Newsweek needs to do more to repair the damage. What is the magazine’s obligation? 2) Is it any surprise, given recent reporting errors, that Americans don’t trust journalists? 3) Newsweek is a highly respected news magazine. How could this happen? 4) What is happening in the journalism profession? Why are journalists and the field in general losing regard among the public?”

Here’s what I wrote back:

” I think there’s a deeper story, and a different set of questions. Newsweek’s retraction was made under enormous pressure form the federal government. Is there actually truth to the allegations? Why does this government take such a consistent role as squelcher-of-the-press? (Two examples: the refusal to let TV cover returning coffins; the 1999 pressure brought to bear on St Martin’s Press to recall and destroy a critical biography of Bush, later re-published by the courageous independent house Soft Skull) And why is the media so complicit in its own strangulation? Why was the Dan Rather scandal allowed to divert attention from the far greater scandal–well known long before the forged memos came to light–of Bush’s AWOL problem?”… That the government was able to force the retraction of an apparently true story is cause for deep concern–and as someone who focuses on ethics, something I’m particularly alarmed about.

Since writing my response (which actually has resulted in two interviews so far), I did a little digging on the story. And I found some very interesting information.

1. Koran abuse is an old story. It was broken nine months ago by Britain’s The Independent, and unlike Newsweek, that paper attributed its sources. Why did it take American journalists nine months to dig it out? The Independent’s site only has the very beginning of the article:
https://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=548033

but the whole thing is posted in several places, including
https://www.sfimc.net/news/2004/08/1700888.php

2. According to a story in Democracy Now today, not only was abuse of the Koran rampant at Guantanamo, as part of a general culture of trashing and profaning all things Muslim (forced shaving, defiling male prisoners with what they thought was menstrual blood, and other psychological abuse), but several Kuwaiti prisoners filed a lawsuit about this.

The whole sordid tale can be found at https://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/18/1434259&mode=thread&tid=25

It does not make me proud of the American government. Desecration of religion has been considered bad karma at least as far back as the Maccabees of ancient Palestine, 165 years before the birth of Christ, whose defeat of the defilers–who ordered pigs, considered unclean by religious Jews, slaughtered n the holy temple–created the Jewish holiday of Chanukah.

Is it any wonder Americans are hated when they do everything in their power to desecrate the entire culture of the lands they occupy?

And isn’t it deeply ironic that White House spokesperson Scott McClellan said, “The report has had serious consequences. People have lost their lives. The image of the United States abroad has been damaged.”

I decry the loss of life. It is a human tragedy on the mound of vast human tragedies this war has sprung on us. But Scott–didn’t it ever occur to you that far more lives were lost, and our country’s reputation was far more damaged, by the “you’re with us or against us” rhetoric, the refusal to wait for the United Nations, the blatantly false justifications for the war (anyone remember that this was supposedly about WMDs? Or remember President Bush joking about looking for them behind the White House furniture?) Engage in unethical and illegal behavior for years, and then blame the messenger?

Something is very wrong with this picture.

https://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-ethics12mar12,1,4171595.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

“If you aren’t going to create an ethics committee right, don’t create it at all,” says Rep. Alan B. Mollohan of West Virginia. “Otherwise, it is a great farce on the body, not to mention the American people.”

Mollohan’s concern is that the US House of Representatives has eviscerated its own ethics rules. While I usually write about ethics in the business sphere, and it seems to me that business has been cleaning up its act, the political dirty tricks seem to get worse and worse with time. We thought Nixon’s people were the masters of political dirty tricks–but we hadn’t met the late Lee Atwater or Karl Rove, who have “elevated it to a high art”–which is to say, debased themselves to the point where one wonders how they can sleep at night. And the Democrats are not so clean-handed either, as witness some of the dirty pool regarding Nader’s presence on the ballot or their lack of willingness to face protestors at the convention (that particular spinelessness extended to both major parties).

This particular chorus of “I didn’t do it, or at least you didn’t catch me” seems largely to benefit House honcho Tom DeLay, who was up to his ears in ethics problems last year. So now the Committee wants to procedurally sandbag any investigation just by stalling for 45 days. Yuck! DeLay’s ethics problems are so widespread that a search for [ethics rules “tom delay” “house of representatives”] (without the square brackets) brings up 12,400 hits on Google, many from within the last few days that the House has been discussing this.

Well, some of us are watching, and we are not pleased.

2. https://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-050604ruhllecture_lat.story

Lecture by John S. Carroll, Editor of the Los Angeles Times: A remarkably candid, if somewhat rambly, look at journalistic ethics, the importance of disclosing a financial relationship, and the monster Orson Welles created by inventing pseudojournalism with his famous War of the
Worlds broadcast.

I happened to notice this as I was clicking on the above story, and went back to have a look afterwards. I liked it enough that I’m going to ask for permission to put it up on my Ethics Articles page at https://www.principledprofits.com — but whether or not I get permission, you can follow the link. (You may have to be registered.)