Buying of News by
Bush's Aides
Is Ruled Illegal
By ROBERT PEAR,
NYTimes on the Web, October 1, 2005
WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 --
Federal auditors said on Friday that the Bush administration violated the law by
buying favorable news coverage of President Bush's education policies, by making
payments to the conservative commentator Armstrong Williams and by hiring a
public relations company to analyze media perceptions of the Republican Party.
In a blistering report, the investigators, from the Government Accountability
Office, said the administration had disseminated "covert propaganda" in the
United States, in violation of a statutory ban.
The contract with Mr. Williams and the general contours of the public relations
campaign had been known for months. The report Friday provided the first
definitive ruling on the legality of the activities.
Lawyers from the accountability office, an independent nonpartisan arm of
Congress, found that the administration systematically analyzed news articles to
see if they carried the message, "The Bush administration/the G.O.P. is
committed to education."
The auditors declared: "We see no use for such information except for
partisan political purposes. Engaging in a purely political activity such
as this is not a proper use of appropriated funds."
The report also sharply criticized the Education Department for telling Ketchum
Inc., a public relations company, to pay Mr. Williams for newspaper columns and
television appearances praising Mr. Bush's education initiative, the No Child
Left Behind Act.
When that arrangement became public, it set off widespread criticism. At a
news conference in January, Mr. Bush said: "We will not be paying
commentators to advance our agenda. Our agenda ought to be able to stand
on its own two feet."
But the Education Department has since defended its payments to Mr. Williams,
saying his commentaries were "no more than the legitimate dissemination of
information to the public."
The G.A.O. said the Education Department had no money or authority to "procure
favorable commentary in violation of the publicity or propaganda prohibition" in
federal law.
The ruling comes with no penalty, but under federal law the department is
supposed to report the violations to the White House and Congress.
In the course of its work, the accountability office discovered a previously
undisclosed instance in which the Education Department had commissioned a
newspaper article. The article, on the "declining science literacy of
students," was distributed by the North American Precis Syndicate and appeared
in numerous small newspapers around the country. Readers were not informed
of the government's role in the writing of the article, which praised the
department's role in promoting science education.
The auditors denounced a prepackaged television story disseminated by the
Education Department. The segment, a "video news release" narrated by a
woman named Karen Ryan, said that President Bush's program for providing
remedial instruction and tutoring to children "gets an A-plus."
Ms. Ryan also narrated two videos praising the new Medicare drug benefit last
year. In those segments, as in the education video, the narrator ended by
saying, "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting."
The television news segments on education and on Medicare did not state that
they had been prepared and distributed by the government. The G.A.O. did
not say how many stations carried the reports.
The public relations efforts came to light weeks before Margaret Spellings
became education secretary in January. Susan Aspey, a spokeswoman for the
secretary, said on Friday that Ms. Spellings regarded the efforts as "stupid,
wrong and ill-advised." She said Ms. Spellings had taken steps "to ensure
these types of missteps don't happen again."
The investigation by the accountability office was requested by Senators Frank
R. Lautenberg of New Jersey and Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, both
Democrats. Mr. Lautenberg expressed concern about a section of the report
in which investigators said they could not find records to confirm that Mr.
Williams had performed all the activities for which he billed the government.
The Education Department said it had paid Ketchum $186,000 for services
performed by Mr. Williams's company. But it could not provide transcripts
of speeches, articles or records of other services invoiced by Mr. Williams, the
report said.
In March, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel said that federal
agencies did not have to acknowledge their role in producing television news
segments if they were factual. The inspector general of the Education
Department recently reiterated that position.
But the accountability office said on Friday: "The failure of an agency to
identify itself as the source of a prepackaged news story misleads the viewing
public by encouraging the audience to believe that the broadcasting news
organization developed the information. The prepackaged news stories are
purposefully designed to be indistinguishable from news segments broadcast to
the public. When the television viewing public does not know that the
stories they watched on television news programs about the government were in
fact prepared by the government, the stories are, in this sense, no longer
purely factual. The essential fact of attribution is missing."
The office said Mr. Williams's work for the government resulted from a written
proposal that he submitted to the Education Department in March 2003. The
department directed Ketchum to use Mr. Williams as a regular commentator on Mr.
Bush's education policies. Ketchum had a federal contract to help
publicize those policies, signed by Mr. Bush in 2002.
The Education Department flouted the law by telling Ketchum to use Mr. Williams
to "convey a message to the public on behalf of the government, without
disclosing to the public that the messengers were acting on the government's
behalf and in return for the payment of public funds," the G.A.O. said.
The Education Department spent $38,421 for production and distribution of the
video news release and $96,850 for the evaluation of newspaper articles and
radio and television programs. Ketchum assigned a score to each article,
indicating how often and favorably it mentioned features of the new education
law.
Congress tried to clarify the ban on "covert propaganda" in a bill signed by Mr.
Bush in May. The law says that no federal money may be used to produce or
distribute a news story unless the government's role is openly acknowledged.
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