New angle to Abramoff scandal: He paid reporters for positive stories

The admission by two columnists that they accepted payments from indicted Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff may be the tip of a large and rather dirty iceberg.

Copley News Service last week dropped Doug Bandow -- who also resigned as a Cato Institute scholar -- after he acknowledged taking as much as $2,000 a pop from Abramoff for up to two dozen columns favorable to the lobbyist's clients. "I am fully responsible and I won't play victim," Bandow said in a statement after Business Week broke the story. "Obviously, I regret stupidly calling to question my record of activism and writing that extends over 20 years. . . . For that I deeply apologize."

Peter Ferrara of the Institute for Policy Innovation has acknowledged taking payments years ago from a half-dozen lobbyists, including Abramoff. Two of his papers, the Washington Times and Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader, have now dropped him. But Ferrara is unapologetic, saying: "There is nothing unethical about taking money from someone and writing an article."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/25/AR2005122500665.html

under the table and writing a paid article without disclosing it.

Plunging Reputations

"The image consultant said, 'You've got to stop wearing those turtlenecks. I think you've got to start showing some cleavage.' I told her I didn't think America was ready for that." -- ABC's Judy Muller, quoted by Amy Tenowich in a Los Angeles Daily News column on female journalists baring more skin.

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more skin! Unless the male journalists are going to show more skin as well. Scratch that, of course - I would like a bit of journalism with content, not packaging.

:mad:

:P

Am I naive, Will? Is this a common practice and I just didn't know about it before? Have other politicians and presidential administrations paid for positive press coverage?

I can sort of understand a lobbyist doing this. But I still think it is wrong. Journalists should remain neutral, right?

it is a corruption of the whole concept.

"Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable" doesn't really work when the comfortable are paying for stories.

All the news that's fit to buy. The Whirled Gnus covered by bribes and payoffs.

Journalism was trusted, despite political bents, we always believed that it was honest.

Now we know that it is anything but. Hired whores, opinions printed to benefit the highest bidder.
Just in time, the internet and Blogsphere offers a real alternative.

article? :rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl: ONLY in their fucked up world.

Pieces of shit. ALL of them. We knew the MSM and press were owned by the GOP.....now we have more than enough proof. I wonder how many talking heads on TV are PAID operatives?

If he took $$$$$$ for his work. Makes you wonder.

,...everything we once represented.

Human "greed" is in charge. That's why we are hated. That's why we are divided. That's why we are suffering. That's why we are so f*cked up, right now.

When we embrace social and economic justice OVER egocentric service and fear,...we MAY move towards a western "civilization". Presently, we are so, NOT, civil.

The Corp. Media is now the Whore-Media.

,...or people or ideals or morals or a nation built upon democracy.

A nation and, by, for greed.

:cry: That is what we have become. :cry: