And then there were three. The Associated Press and USA Today bring us Mike McManus who joins Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher in the issue over not disclosing money they've received for promoting government policies.
The Department of Health and Human Services acknowledged Thursday that it paid a syndicated columnist at least $4,000 for work on behalf of Bush administration efforts to promote marriage.
On Thursday, a third example surfaced. Mike McManus, who writes a weekly column syndicated in 30 to 40 newspapers, said he was paid about $4,000 to train marriage mentors in 2003 and 2004. McManus was subcontracted by the Lewin Group, which had a contract to support community-based programs "to form and sustain healthy marriages."
McManus' non-profit group, Marriage Savers, also is being paid $49,000 by a group that received a Health and Human Services grant to teach similar principles to unwed couples who are having children.
Who's at fault—the government agencies, the journalists or the public relations agencies? All three of them are at fault.
Will there be more than three examples of this? I'm not sure, but this will surely bring a greater amount of scrutiny to the millions of dollars that the Bush administration has spent on public relations. In the meantime, I would like to remind public relations supporters and detractors of the following:
It is the unethical implementation of the tactics that are at issue here, not the tactics themselves.
While all three groups are at fault, none of the individuals involved accurately represent the government, the media or the public relations industry.
UPDATE: More on the topic from Editor and Publisher in the article "Pundit Payola: Williams, Gallagher Were Wrong, But What's Right?"
Comments