Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher, and Michael McManus aren't the only pundits who have been paid to parrot the Right's agenda.
According to Brian Montopoli of the Columbia Journalism Review, there's a much less-recognized, but more widespread, problem on the nation's op-ed pages: Writers who appear independent, but who are funded by those with a stake in the controversies they're writing about.
In his January 31 story on CampaignDesk.org, he wrote that the press is fighting "increasingly aggressive ideologues" for control of what constitutes "objective" opinion. And the ideologues are winning.
Montopoli cites these examples:
- James Glassman, the founder of Tech Central Station, wrote an op-ed attacking the documentary "Super Size Me" which ran in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. What he didn't disclose is that one of the contributors to Tech Central Station was McDonald's Corporation.
- Nick Schultz, also from Tech Central Station, wrote in the Los Angeles Times that the jury was still out on global warming--a position rejected by most reputable scientists. Schultz failed to disclose that Tech Central Station is partially funded by ExxonMobil, which--ahem--has a position on global warming.
- Former Energy Secretary James Schlesinger also voiced his doubts about global warming in his op-ed in the Washington Post. At the time Schlesinger was on the board of directors of Peabody Energy, a big coal company.
- James Taylor, the managing editor of Environment & Climate News, wrote an article criticizing the film "The Day After Tomorrow" and attacking mainstream climate science. A major contributor his publication was a right-wing think tank partially funded by--you guessed it--ExxonMobil.
This is significant for a number of reasons.
First, it is further evidence that the GOP and its supporters have assembled a well-funded, well-oiled propaganda machine.
Second, the Right refuses to play by the rules of journalism. as Washington Monthly editor Paul Glastris wrote on his magazine's "Political Animal" website:
What's striking about this emerging payola scandal is the aggressive cluelessness of the participants towards basic standards of journalistic decency....
This is an attitude you're seeing a lot of today in Washington. The ascendant class of conservative pundit-operatives looks upon old strictures of behavior with a kind of incomprehension, even contempt.
Third, as I noted in an earlier diary entry, the Right has a dirty little secret: Millions of dollars are funneled to pundits and commentators through a handful of non-profit foundations.
Conflicted writers are a headache for newspaper editors. But they might be an opportunity for investigative-minded Kossacks. Perhaps you know of, or can find out about, the money trail behind the right-wing pundits who write in your local papers. If enough of them get exposed, the mainstream media might start waking up to the Right's private-sector welfare state.