Les Jones

Media Behaving Badly > Armstrong Williams

I'm behind the curve on the Armstrong Williams story, but it looks like a bad breach of ethics all around. In a nutshell, the White House paid the talk show host's company $240,000 for a mix of legitimate services and questionable influence.

The contract required Williams' company to produce radio and TV spots featuring one-minute "reads" by Education Secretary Rod Paige and to allow Paige and other department officials to appear as studio guests with Williams.

The commentator also was to use his influence with other black journalists to get them to discuss No Child Left Behind, a centerpiece of President Bush's domestic agenda, which aims to raise achievement among poor and minority children and penalizes many schools that don't make progress.

A government agency paying for influence on the content of the public airwaves - with no disclosure - seems wrong. If a record company paid a radio station to play its songs without disclosure that would be payola, and would be illegal. The White House and Willams both look bad here. The fact that it was taxpayer money just makes it worse.