Let The Army Neocon Shit Bags Defend This

[DEMON CUNT]

Originally posted by diamondD
At least you finally acknowledge that we weren't under one during Reagan and Bush 1. Maybe the meds are starting to take effect.

Huh? Better check your timeline, jesusbitch!

[ODShowtime]

FCC Member Urges Armstrong Williams Probe

Thu Jan 13, 3:06 PM ET U.S. Government - AP

By GENARO ARMAS, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - A member of the Federal Communications Commission said Thursday the agency should investigate whether conservative commentator Armstrong Williams broke the law by failing to disclose that the Bush administration paid him $240,000 to plug its education policies.

Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, a Democrat, said the agency has received about a dozen complaints against Williams.

"I certainly hope the FCC will take action and fully investigate whether any laws have been broken," Adelstein said at the commission's regular monthly meeting.

Williams said that neither he nor any of the stations that carried his syndicated program violated the law because two one-minute ads that aired during the show, and that also promoted the law, specifically stated they were paid for by the Education Department.

"I was not engaged in any public relations in this campaign. It was strictly advertising," Williams said by phone. "I'm not concerned about this witchhunt because I know that I've done nothing wrong, nothing illegal."

None of the other commissioners responded to Adelstein's statement during the meeting. Afterward, both FCC Chairman Michael Powell, a Republican, and David Solomon, who heads the agency's enforcement bureau, declined to comment.

Generally, the FCC reviews letters and complaints before determining if there should be an investigation. Powell said he had not seen the complaints filed against Williams.

Williams, a nationally syndicated radio, print and television personality, was paid by the Education Department to promote the No Child Left Behind Act. The contract required Williams' company to produce radio and TV ads that promote the controversial law and feature one-minute "reads" by Education Secretary Rod Paige.

The deal also allowed Paige and other department officials to appear as studio guests with Williams.

Adelstein also called on the FCC to investigate a radio station programmer in Buffalo, N.Y. who was fired by Entercom Communications Corp. for breaking the station's rules against taking gifts from business contacts. He said it may be part of a recent increase in so-called "payola" violations.

Specifically, Adelstein said the Buffalo case and Williams' contract could be possible violations of federal telecommunication law that requires disclosure of any payment or gift for airing any material for broadcast, like a radio disc jockey being paid to play a particular recording.

An investigation could also extend to the stations that carried the program if the broadcaster knew in advance of Williams' arrangement but did not make that clear to viewers, aides to Adelstein said.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=513&ncid=691&e=4&u=/ap/20050113/ap_on_go_ot/fcc_williams

It would be so great if the FCC has to turn around and bite it's own ass! This needs to be fully investigated so we can who else on BBB's reading list is on the dole.

[DrMaddVibe]

Dean Campaign Made Payments To Two Bloggers

By WILLIAM M. BULKELEY and JAMES BANDLER
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
January 14, 2005; Page B2

Howard Dean's presidential campaign hired two Internet political "bloggers" as consultants so that they would say positive things about the former governor's campaign in their online journals, according to a former high-profile Dean aide.

Zephyr Teachout, the former head of Internet outreach for Mr. Dean's campaign, made the disclosure earlier this week in her own Web log, Zonkette. She said "to be very clear, they never committed to supporting Dean for the payment -- but it was very clearly, internally, our goal." The hiring of the consultants was noted in several publications at the time.

The issue of political payments to commentators has become hot following disclosures that the Bush administration paid a conservative radio and newspaper pundit, Armstrong Williams, $240,000 to plug its "No Child Left Behind" education policy.

With the growing importance of blogs -- short for Web logs -- Ms. Teachout said she thinks bloggers need to rethink their attitudes toward ethics. A blog is an online personal journal or series of postings, dealing with just about anything. Millions of people use blogs to post diatribes, rants, links to other sites and erudite analyses hourly, daily or sporadically. Some make a little money by selling ads. The Dean campaign's adroit use of the Internet helped make its long-shot effort credible.

Ms. Teachout's posting shook the confidence of many people in the blogosphere, as many bloggers like to call the online community. Bloggers have been quick to criticize the unspoken biases of mainstream media, and they helped expose the questionable documents used by CBS News in a report about President Bush's National Guard experience.

The partisan Democratic political bloggers who were hired by the Dean campaign were Jerome Armstrong, who publishes the blog MyDD, and Markos Zuniga, who publishes DailyKos. DailyKos is the ninth most linked blog on the Internet, according to Technorati, a measurement service, and in October, at the height of the presidential campaign, it received as many as one million daily visits.

The two men, who jointly operated a small political consulting firm, said they didn't believe the Dean campaign had been trying to buy their influence. Both men noted that they had promoted Mr. Dean's campaign long before they were hired and continued to do so after their contract with the campaign ended.

Mr. Zuniga said they were paid $3,000 a month for four months and he noted that he had posted a disclosure near the top of his daily blog that he worked for the Dean campaign doing "technical consulting." Mr. Armstrong said he shut down his site when he went to work for the campaign, then resumed posting after his contract ended.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Dean said the two bloggers hired by the campaign did nothing unethical because both disclosed their connection to the Dean operation.

Ms. Teachout said the campaign never explicitly asked the bloggers to promote Mr. Dean. But she said the Dean campaign wanted to keep them from shifting to rivals. Ms. Teachout said she has been raising the issue as part of a broader push on her part to get bloggers who are also consultants to publish their client lists. She said that as more people have turned to bloggers for news, she came to the conclusion that bloggers "have an active responsibility to be absolutely transparent."

--Jeanne Cummings contributed to this article.

Write to William M. Bulkeley at bill.bulkeley@wsj.com and James Bandler at james.bandler@wsj.com

[ODShowtime]

Originally posted by DrMaddVibe
Mr. Zuniga said they were paid $3,000 a month for four months and he noted that he had posted a disclosure near the top of his daily blog that he worked for the Dean campaign doing "technical consulting." Mr. Armstrong said he shut down his site when he went to work for the campaign, then resumed posting after his contract ended.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Dean said the two bloggers hired by the campaign did nothing unethical because both disclosed their connection to the Dean operation.

and that's why it's ok

[DrMaddVibe]

I smell hypocrisy!

[Nickdfresh]

Originally posted by DrMaddVibe
I smell hypocrisy!

I think this is far more common place than one might suspect. At least they admitted it! Political operatives have way overemphasized the power of the blog.

[ODShowtime]

Originally posted by DrMaddVibe
I smell hypocrisy!

There's a big difference between whether you admit your compromise clearly to your audience or not. That said, it's a shame anyone needs to be paid to shill policies. That said, there's also a big difference between when candidates do it and when president's administrations do it.

Let get back to the main point: Both of these fellows clearly disclosed their ties, Armstrong did not.