TAKES TWO TO TANGO: EDUCATION DEPARTMENT, WILLIAMS SHARE BLAME

Conservative commentator Armstrong Williams abused public trust by turning
his television show into a clandestine paid advertisement for the
administration's No Child Left Behind initiative.

It's another embarrassing moment for journalists, but the Department of
Education shouldn't escape its share of the shame for complicity in this
latest erosion of public trust.

Mr. Williams' arrangement with the department required him to produce radio
and television spots with Education Secretary Rod Paige. Mr. Williams also
was expected to lobby black journalists to support No Child Left Behind.

Make no mistake, Mr. Williams deserves the intense criticism he is
receiving for his ethical lapse. He became a covert paid spokesman for
government policy, an arrangement that corrupts the arm's-length
relationship that should exist between media and government.

And if this was somehow conceived as an outreach to African-Americans,
paying for black support is mocking, insulting and counterproductive.
Moreover, the arrangement may violate a law designed to prevent public
officials from using tax dollars in overt self-promotion.

Department officials insist the contract was a "permissible use of taxpayer
funds under legal government-contracting procedures." We'll leave it up to
lawyers to determine whether that's true, but there's a bigger ethical
issue at stake.

The White House's drug-control policy office previously sent local
television stations packaged reports on a government campaign to curb drug
abuse. The problem is that the "reports" looked like an actual
independently produced newscast and featured a former Washington journalist
hired by the government. None of that was disclosed.

The Government Accountability Office denounced the administration's
anti-drug campaign and, in a separate case, criticized other slick
"reports" in support of the president's Medicare drug benefit as misuses of
taxpayer money.

The Bush administration is not alone in playing this opinion manipulation
game. During the Clinton years, drug chief Barry McCaffrey secretly paid
television networks to promote an anti-drug message in the scripts of
television shows.

It's understandable and necessary that government's message is heard. But
it's corrupting, not informing, to disingenuously wrap its message in
sheep's clothing.