Augusta focus. ([Augusta, Ga.) 198?-current, January 20, 2005, Image 10

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Newspaper Page Text10A January 20, 2005 Williams: Journalist criticized for propaganda for hire Continued from page 2A rograms, his syndicated news- Eap)%: column, and also influ ence other black journalists to write positively about it. He was also supposed to inter view Secretary of Education Rod Paige for a series of one minute commercials. At no time did Williams ever üblicly disclose that he was Eeing paid to lobby for NCLB. When the news broke, his col umn was dropped, and his tel evision show was put in limbo. The anger in journalistic circles was ﬁ:llpable. “The deal between the Edu cation Department and Williams is sleazy, unethical and a misuse of taxpayer’s money,” bellowed The Philadelphia Tribune editorial. “Wheres the money, Arm strong?” columnist ~ Tracey O'Shaughnessy wrote for the R{{»ub/imn-Ameriam. “The wily commentator-cum-pro moter is not giving it back. That would be %udi crous, he told USA Today, “because they bought advertis ing and they got it. But Arm strong Williams evidently does nt. Even the Natonal Associa ton of Black Journalists, of which Williams is not a mem ber, weighed in strong, “T thought we in the medxg'_\ were supposed to be watch dogs, not lalpdogs," Bryan Moore, NABJ vice president for print, said. “I thouﬁht we had an administraton headed by a president who took an Economic Continued from page 2A Covenant,” hosted several hundred people, most of who were minorities busi nesspeople with pledges to work with Jackson’s organi zation to address the wealth disparity between blacks and their white counterparts. Jackson said that African- Americans and other minorities have been eco nomically disenfranchised, crippling their pathway to success. “The wealth gap leads to an opportunity gap,” said Jackson, who broke barriers when he ran in 1984 and 1988 for president of the United States. “Excellence and effort cannot compete with inheritance and access.” This economic stagnation, said Jackson, has occurred through unscrupulous mort gage lending, automotive finance mark-ups for minorities, and pension defrauding. He called for an end to these predatory lend ing practices, or charging high interest rates and fees that are not beneficial to the borrower. Predatory lending compa nies are five times more like ly to be in black communi ties than white, and African- Americans are 4.1 times more likely to be victimized by predatory lending. In a breakfast discussion between Jackson and Elliot Spitzer, the New York attor ney general, Spitzer, who is a candidate for governor in 2006, said that the fight for racial economic parity is an uphill battle. “Capital flows influence decisions,” said Spitzer. “Everyone fights to maintain the status quo. They have a overwhelming constituen cy,” he added. But Spitzer, who has expe rience in mutual fund fraud, pledged to track down predatory lending compa nies and said that his office oath to uphold the First Amendment — not try to rent it. Newspapers across the coun try that mmn Williams's column, Denver Post, also reacted unmodxat’ddy “The Post publi 21 of Williams' coﬁ)umns between Feb. 1 aj\d Nov. 19, dZ]O%,” dn.lacl rs Jan 11 itor m. Wl’;lallrz none focused solely on No Child Left Behind, several pieces sniped at critics of the law, especially the National Education Associa ton. Williams is a prominent black conservative, %ut while his ideology obviously has a place on editorial pages, his promotional deal made 1t ques tonable whether those 'udf ments were indcpcnd,cn y gn"{wd - or bought and paid r. Columnists across the coun try didn spare the rod in casti ting \Xflﬁm for what they Elieved to have been an unpar donable deed. “Williams, who committed the ultimate professional sin by accepting money ($240,000) to advance a government pro am, provides a case smdg of ﬁurring the line between jour nalism and something we don' even have a word ,%r wrote columnist Kathleen Parker of the Union Leader. “Propaganda seems awfully strong, %)ur I'm not sure what else to call it when the govern ment pays a journalist to push its policies.” Parker added, "As a syndicated columnist in the same family as Williams — 7r- would prosecute those involve in such schemes. In addition to halting the economic misuse in the black community, Jackson wants to see more commer cial ventures between black businesses and mainstream companies. “Allowing minority-owned businesses to compete in the marketplace will increase dividends for all,” said Jack son. Philadelphia Mayor John Street spoke about his suc cess In using minority con tractors to build two new stadiums in the City of Brotherly Love. Street said he used 19 minority contrac tors to construct the sprawl ing $1.2 billion arenas. “I represent a city with a tremendous amount of minority and poor people,” said Street. “We need to level the economic playing field.” Manhattan Borough Presi dent C. Virginia Fields said that she has established an advisory board that will ensure woman- and minori ty-owned businesses are uti lized if the Jets get the official go-ahead to build a new sta dis In e cw “Minority- and woman owned businesses must par ticipate meaningfully in the redevelopment of Manhat tan’s West Side,” said Fields, who is widely considered to be a candidate in this year’s mayoral race. The conference was not free of controversy. A small group of protesters with the organization Black United Fund of New York held a protest outside the Hilton New York Hotel during Spitzer’s talk. They allege that he actively worked to dismantle the Northeastern Urban League and “sensa tionalized the investigation” of fraud at Hale House. AUGUSTA FOCUS bune Media Services (TMS), which dropped Williams col umn last week — 1 have more than a casual interest in this story. Every journalist knows that you dont take money from people or agencies you intend 1O COVer. ur;‘dTlm’s not justthan ethical erstanding in the abstract; its usua%'nwnttcn into a con tract. In fact, Williams had such a contract with TMS, which formed the grounds for cancel ing his column.” In an effort to stop the blecdin% that could easily put him out o business, Williams quickly fell on his sword. “Its important that | have a cxuiiblee(\l/oicc agxcd that l'r:i\ r}gt rceived as bei al r \‘»)vchat Isay,” he rok’i‘%i& Today. “This is my responsibility. | blame no one. I get the message an’cli‘}z will be better.” . e only one to seemi come ton{{’dliams' rescue was conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who is himself under legal scrutiny for his alleged illegal prescription use. A‘Hélcm's a lirde bit of irony here,” l.imbaugh told his audi ence recendy. "How can jour nalists question his ethics for taking marching orders from the ‘Krm'ncm of Education when those very same journal ists take their marching orders from the Democrat fax machines?” The black conservative wasnt the only to catch heat. The wis dom, or lack thereof, of Secre tary Paige and his staff was also Marriage: King used on both sides of gay union issu Continued from page 2A Andrew Young, who was a top aide to King. U.S. Rep. John Lewis, who helped organize the March on Washington where King gave his famous / Have a Dream’ speech, has been a visible supporter of gay activists, filing a friend-of-the-court brief in a Massachuserts case that led to the state becoming the first in the nation to legalize same-sex marriage. And the Rev. Joseph Lowery, who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with King, agreed that dis crimination of any kind is not something King would have stood for. “I don't Forman: Often ostracized by African Americans Continued from page 10A That was the way things had been for almost sev enty years and that was the way whites intended them to stay.” But SNCC had other ideas. And though Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), received most of the credit and news coverage, SNCC had been working in many rural communities long before King showed up on the scene. And that wasn’t easy. “Sam Block [a SNCC organizer in Mississippi] would eventually receive a severe beating from three whites, which frac tured his ribs and put him in bed for a week,” Forman writes. “Yet, in questioned. “Mr. Williams strenuously cdaims he supported the No l('ll‘:hild l:ftcd de:)'l d law bcfo::i any money, an thcxtacoicspno m);on tocydoubt him,” wrote Andrew . Rother ham, education policy director at the Progressive Pocﬁcy Insti wte, in a NY Times op-ed Wednesday tided, “No Ethics Left Behind.” “But dd;is ({chfcnsc just adds ineptitude to the already shady nactpilre of the deal. If Mr. Williams was a proponent of the law, then the political appointees at the Department %u&tiun spent almost a quarter of a million dollars pay ing off someone already on their ts}i:li:t. Ethics nqmrithsm:ﬁ%— i is a stunn ineffi c?fr;t use of üblil?gg(')llars . every bit as rcgundant as pay ing football fans to watch tgle Super Bowl,” Rotherham wrote. The Billings Gazette of Mon tana was even more direct. “This case is nothing more than the Bush administration bribing a journalist to color his news reports in favor of a par ticular point of view,” The Gazettes Jan. 12th editorial charged. “It is manipulation of the public. A deceptive prac tice. Covert propaganda.” Williams and the Bush Admin istration may also find them selves in legal trouble. “Provisions routinely added to federal appropriations bills for bid the use of funds for “pub licity or propaganda purposes recall any experience that would put Dr. King in the category of excluding peo ple,” he said. Ultimately, Young and other King associates say the whole debate is irrele vant to the issues at the heart of Kings agenda, which the slain leader called the “triple evils” of war, poverty and racism. “It’s a sick debate because it refuses to raise the issues that he raised,” Young said. “He didn't say anything about sex at all as far as | was concerned.” Some black leaders have accused Republicans of using the gay marriage debate in the last election as a ploy to divide the black electorate, which typically votes mostly some ways the physical danger and violence seemed no worse to the SNCC workers than the loneliness and other psy chological strains. “‘People would just get afraid of me,’ Sam reported. ‘They said, ‘He’s a Freedom Rider.’ Women told their daughters, don’t have anything to do with me, that I couldn’t carry (take) them out because I was a Freedom Rider. | was there to stir up trou ble, that’s all. So when | walked down the street, people would say, ‘There’s the Freedom Rider. Look at him. They'd say, “Ain’t that the Freedom Rider? ‘Yeah, thats himm's” Being ostracized by African-Americans paled when compared to the within the United States not heretofore authorized by Con &r?u” The Denver Post notes. is isnt the first time the Bush administration has pack aged propaganda as “news.” The General Accounting Office has twice ruled that the Bush administrations use of repackaged videos - to pro rp;notc federal drug policy and a new Medicare law - t|lsl “covert ropaganda” because the videos go not make clear that the gov ernment produced the material lauding the golicia." Thus, the pro%)sed ipartisan investigation by the House Education Cu;)hmmittcc. Interestingly, the Bush Admin istration has so far just brushed the controversy aside, saying Lhmuih the Education Dept. that the deal was a “permissi ble use of taxpayer funds under legal government con tracting procedures.” Their goal, administration officials say, was to inform parents in poor and other communities if color how NCLB would improve edu cation for their ciildren by mandating school system accountability. But, observers say, they did it the wrong way. Experts in the public rela tons field see the Williams fiasco of nondisclosure as a black eye for those who play by the rules. “As public relations profes sionals, we are disheartened by this type of tactic,” Judith Democrat, on an issue that has never been a priority in the community. “l 1 don’t remember nei ther Jesus or Martin Luther King discussing the issue,” Lowery said. “I don’t think it was on the agenda back then any more than it is now.” The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who also worked closely with King, said the idea of a 1.5 consttutional amendment on gay mar riage has been used as a diversion. “The big issue that we have now is the number of abused children, the num ber of orphaned children, the number of divorces ... these are the issues grip ping us,” he said. NAACP board chairman violence of that era. Toanistbert Lee was killed,” writes Forman. “Herbert Lee of Liberty (Miss.), black, age fifty two, father of ten chil dren, active in the NAACP and then in the voter registration proj ect, was killed with a .38 pistol by Eugene Hurst, white, a state representa tive. Hurst was never arrested, booked, or charged. A coroner’s inquest ruled that the killing was in self defense and he walked out free forever.” But the killings didn’t stop there. Foreman continues, “Three years later, on January 31, 1964, Lewis Allen, one of the key witnesses in the killing of Herbert Lee, was planning to leave Missis T. Phair, president and chief executive officer of the 20,000-member Public Rela tions Society of America, said in statement. “It does not describe the true practice of ‘public rl;:lations.’ PRSG strongly objects to any pai endogrlemcn’t that is not Ed]y disclosed as such and is pre sented as objective news cov erage. l‘aßgc.‘:causc of the Williams scandal, questions about the integrity of other conservative pundits of color are now intensifying. “...(Readers have begun sending e-mails asking whether lam also on the GgOP take,” wrote World- Net Daily columnist Michelle Malkin 1n her online Jan. 12 offering, This Column is Not For SaE A frequent commen tator on FOX News, Malkin once called liberals “bottom feeders.” A 3 a pesule of the Williams/Department of Education payoff, the rheto ric against the rest of us will get even nastier,” the conser vative Malkin continued. “In the name of “minority out reach,” the Republican edu cation bureaucrats who cooked up their pathetic scheme with Williams have done more damage to our credibility than all the unhinged liberal cartoonists and race-baiters and griev ance-mongers could ever hope to do.” Julian Bond said he’s encouraged by the fact that King’s legacy continues to inspire movements decades after his death, but cau tioned against drawing any conclusions about a man who’s no longer alive to speak for himself. “He is a handy weapon for both sides to wield. But that’s not new. We hear all kinds of people quoting him to promote their point of view,” Bond said. “But if youre saying Martin Luther King wouldn’t do this or would do that with out any foundation, that’s just your opinion.” sippi the next morning and look for work in Wisconsin. That night they found him dead in his front yard. He had been shot with a shotgun three times.” That’s the environment in which Jim Foreman chose to work. And because of his work, and that of others, we're now far removed, to a large extent, from that kind of brazen bestiality. George E. Curry is edi tor-in-chief of the NNPA News Service and Black- PressUSA.com. His most recent book is “The Best of Emerge Magazine,” an anthology published by Ballantine Books. Curry’s weekly radio commentary is syndicated by Capitol Radio News Service (301/588-1993). He can be reached through his Web site, georgecurry.com.