The Education Dept. paid commentator Wiliams $241,000 to promote the administration’s No Child Left Behind law. Only problem is that he didn’t tell viewers or anyone else that he was on the payroll.
Media distributor severs ties with commentator
WASHINGTON — Armstrong Williams, who was paid by the Education
Department to promote President Bush’s education policies, says the
public outcry and his firing by the company that syndicated his
newspaper column are "the price you pay" for a mistake.
updates: Jay Rosen, of Pressthink, weighs in on the Ketchum/Williams affair:
Bloggers Are Missing in Action as Ketchum Tests the Conscience
of PR
"Maybe this is the way things are done all the time in PR today. It’s one of the most plausible explanations we have for the Ketchum contract, the apparent fraudulence of which is roughly parallel to the memos in the Dan Rather case."