President Bush fired another shot in his ongoing war on journalism last week by denying investigators access to White House personnel in the Armstrong Williams scandal. Fortunately, this was only a metaphorical shot, unlike the shelling of foreign journalists in Iraq. Nonetheless, it reveals the deep and abiding commitment of this administration to keeping the public in the dark and controlling news coverage to promote its policies.
The crux of the underlying scandal is that the Department of Education paid Williams $240,000 of taxpayer money to promote Bush's No Child Left Behind Act through a public relations firm. Williams did not disclose this financial arrangement, even as he regularly appeared on television and in print supporting the President's educational policies.
Williams' conduct certainly violates basic rules of journalistic ethics and is plainly wrong. But what grates the most is the administration's willingness to lie to the American people. Williams was only one of several ersatz journalists hired to mislead the citizenry.
If Bush's educational policies are legitimate, they should be able to stand on their own merits. The government should not secretly pay hacks to pose as journalists in an attempt to sell their ideas to the people. Recall from high school civics class that government derives its just power from the consent of the governed. If it derives that consent through propaganda and misdirection, then its power is not just at all. A free press is essential to a democratic society because citizens need information to guide their vote. The Armstrong Williams affair reflects badly on the president, not only because it is so plainly dishonest, but also because it reveals unbridled contempt for the democratic process.
When the payments to Williams came to light, Inspector General Jack Higgins launched an investigation into his contract with the Education Department. But Higgins has run into some trouble. According to a briefing he gave U.S. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the administration is blocking Higgins' access to White House officials who know about the contract, thereby frustrating the investigation.
The White House justified this on legalistic grounds. \An inspector general's jurisdiction is limited,"" Spokesperson Dana Perino said. She asserted that the White House is not a federal agency within the meaning of the law and therefore not within the IG's jurisdiction. The case law on this point appears to be fairly thin, but you don't need to be a lawyer to see that the distinction is more about politics than about law. Privilege or no, the President can certainly authorize his staff to comply with the investigation.
A refusal to comply is clearly not an attempt to stand on principle. It is an attempt to hide wrongdoing. Miller suggests as much when he says Perino's claim ""unmistakably leads you back to the question, 'Is there something the White House is trying to cover up or hide?'"" Bush got caught trying to control the news, and now he's simply playing at damage control.
It seems that every day brings word of another volley in Bush's assault on journalism. Remember how those embedded reporters in the Iraq war kept reporting unverified discoveries of weapons of mass destruction? Remember Private Jessica Lynch's heroic story, later found to be arranged for public relations value? Bush knows that controlling the flow of information is the way to control public opinion.
Even worse, recently reports have come out that the government has distributed prepackaged ""news"" segments to television stations. Each is disguised to look to the viewer like any other piece of TV news. They are designed not to inform, but to promote administration policies.
From the Agriculture Department to the Defense Department, more than 20 federal agencies have produced hundreds of such segments and distributed them to the public through the complicity of local television networks. These segments have explicitly supported Bush's positions, from invading Iraq to the Medicare bill, and featured scripted ""interviews"" with senior officials.
Thus, it's no surprise that the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, has called them ""covert propaganda"" of questionable legality. It's disturbing enough that large corporations regularly produce these fake news segments. It's all but treasonous when the federal government does so.
After all that, White House's attempts to limit the investigation in the Williams brouhaha seem pretty tame by comparison. Sadly, it's just another day in George W. Bush's America, where the news can't be trusted and ""facts"" are just another form of spin. And hey, since he turned out to be so right about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, why not just hand over Social Security, too? It's not like we wanted a comfortable retirement anyway.
opinion@dailycardinal.com.
