Armstrong Williams Pt. 2 - Maggie Gallagher.

[Partha]

Took a payout from H&HS and didn't disclose it. No link, it's in today's Washington Post.

Wonder how many more we'll find?

[Relbeek Einre]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ar ... Jan25.html

[Relbeek Einre]

So what should we call this? Bribegate?

[Klast Brell]

Of couse not. Only the democrats do things that deserve the -Gate designation.

Republicans just have memory lapses.

Gallagher filed a column in which she said that "I should have disclosed a government contract when I later wrote about the Bush marriage initiative. I would have, if I had remembered it. My apologies to my readers."

[Aabe]

Oh, you mean like Watergate??

[Ddrak]

Watergate was clearly the Dems fault. Fuckers shouldn't have been plotting against the President.

[Embar Angylwrath]

Watergate was clearly the Dems fault. Fuckers shouldn't have been plotting against the President.

Werd

[Rsak]

I think that there is quite a large difference between this case and Armstrong Williams.

Here Gallagher has invoices detailing specific work that she did because she was an expert in the field while the dept of H&HS did not have that kind of expertise. To claim that is the same as being paid as a mouthpeice for the Education dept as in Armstrong's case is not very honest. The payout and the circumstances are clearly different.

However, I completely agree that it was a mistake to not disclose this, but I also find it frighteningly dangerous to take a stance that no government organization can use the services of potentially the best expert in the field just because they also act as a journalist.

[Relbeek Einre]

The contract was not for development work, Rsak, it was for promotional work.

If you're a journalist, sorry, you shouldn't take a contract like that, because it's conflict of interest.

Granted, the work she was doing seemed uncontroversial enough...

[Rsak]

The work she did was to develop a brochure, article, and lend her expertise on marriage. That is why she was approached not because she was a journalist.

And again I refuse to believe that just because someone has written some articles that have been published it means that person can never work for the government despite possibly being the best in their field. That is a very dangerous precident to set.

Had she made it publicly known she had done this work there would not have been a story. That was a mistake and she has admitted it, but to call this incident a scandal is juvenile.

[Relbeek Einre]

And again I refuse to believe that just because someone has written some articles that have been published it means that person can never work for the government despite possibly being the best in their field. That is a very dangerous precident to set.

There's a difference between having articles published and having a career as a journalist.

Conflict of interest issues are part and parcel of a number of careeers, from law to medicine to government work. Journalism is certainly no exception, and it's an obvious conflict of interest to accept money from a group on which the journalist is likely to report.

[Aabe]

Interesting thought. If you work for say a right/left leaning media source as a journalist for their content. Can you be an unbiaased journalist, since you are being paid by a biased source?

[Partha]

There's another difference to this story.

She testified twice before Congress, once in 2003 and once in 2004, on the Defense of Marriage Act. In neither case did she disclose that she took money from H&HS to promote DOMA.

Oh, and as a BTW, how is it a liberal media if Bush is paying them all?