*Apologies for cutting and pasting, but this is too good to miss!
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*Third Columnist Caught with Hand in the Bush Till*
By Eric Boehlert
Salon.com
Thursday 27 January 2005
/*Michael McManus, conservative author of the syndicated column
'Ethics & Religion,' received $10,000 to promote a marriage
initiative.*/
One day after President Bush ordered his Cabinet secretaries to
stop hiring commentators to help promote administration initiatives, and
one day after the second high-profile conservative pundit was found to
be on the federal payroll, a third embarrassing hire has emerged. Salon
has confirmed that Michael McManus, a marriage advocate whose syndicated
column, 'Ethics & Religion,' appears in 50 newspapers, was hired as a
subcontractor by the Department of Health and Human Services to foster a
Bush-approved marriage initiative. McManus championed the plan in his
columns without disclosing to readers he was being paid to help it succeed.
Responding to the latest revelation, Dr. Wade Horn, assistant
secretary for children and families at HHS, announced Thursday that HHS
would institute a new policy that forbids the agency from hiring any
outside expert or consultant who has any working affiliation with the
media. 'I needed to draw this bright line,' Horn tells Salon. 'The
policy is being implemented and we're moving forward.'
Horn's move came on the heels of Wednesday's report in the
Washington Post that HHS had paid syndicated columnist and marriage
advocate Maggie Gallagher $21,000 to write brochures and essays and to
brief government employees on the president's marriage initiative.
Gallagher later wrote in her column that she would have revealed the
$21,000 payment to readers had she recalled receiving it.
The Gallagher revelation came just three weeks after USA Today
reported that the Education Department, through a contract with the
Ketchum public relations firm, paid $240,000 to Armstrong Williams, a
conservative African-American print, radio and television pundit, to
help promote Bush's No Child Left Behind program to minority audiences.
To date, the Bush administration has paid public relation firms
$250 million to help push proposals, according to a report Thursday in
USA Today. That's double what the Clinton administration spent on P.R.
from 1997 to 2000. Shortly after Williams' contract came to light, the
Democrats on the Committee on Government Reform wrote a letter to
President Bush demanding that he 'immediately provide to us all past and
ongoing efforts to engage in covert propaganda, whether through
contracts with commentators, the distribution of video news releases, or
other means.' As of Thursday, a staffer on the committee told Salon,
there had been no response.
Horn says McManus, who could not be reached for comment, was paid
approximately $10,000 for his work as a subcontractor to the Lewin
Group, a health care consultancy hired by HHS to implement the Community
Healthy Marriage Initiative, which encourages communities to combat
divorce through education and counseling. McManus provided training
during two-day conferences in Chattanooga, Tenn., and also made
presentations at HHS-sponsored conferences. His syndicated column has
appeared in such papers as the Washington Times, the Dallas Morning News
and the Charlotte Observer.
Horn, who has known McManus for years, says he first learned about
the payment on Thursday. In the wake of the Gallagher story, he asked
his staff to review all outside contracts and determine if there were
any other columnists being paid by HHS. They informed him about McManus.
Horn says the review for similar contracts continues.
Horn insists that HHS was not paying Gallagher and McManus to write
about Bush administration initiatives but for their expertise as
marriage advocates. 'We live in a complicated world and people wear many
different hats,' he says. 'People who have expertise might also be
writing columns. The line has become increasingly blurred between who's
a member of the media and who is not. Thirty years ago if you were a
columnist, then you were a full-time employee of a newspaper. Columnists
today are different.'
The problem springs from the failure of both Gallagher and McManus
to disclose their government payments when writing about the Bush
proposals. But one HHS critic says another dynamic has led to the
controversy, and a blurring of ethical and journalistic lines: Horn and
HHS are hiring advocates -- not scholars -- from the pro-marriage
movement. 'They're ideological sympathizers who propagandize,' says Tim
Casey, attorney for Legal Momentum, a women's rights organization. He
describes McManus as being a member of the 'extreme religious right.'
Horn denies the charge: 'It's not true that we have just been
selectively working with conservatives.' According to news accounts, the
administration seeks to spend $1.5 billion promoting marriage through
marriage-enrichment courses, counseling and public-awareness campaigns.
In 1996, McManus co-founded Marriage Savers, a conservative
advocacy group, which, among other things, urges clergy not to conduct a
marriage ceremony unless the couple has had lengthy counseling first.
'The church should not be a 'wedding factory,' but a training ground for
strong marriages to go the distance -- for life,' McManus wrote.
In his April 3, 2004, column, McManus wrote, 'The Healthy Marriage
Initiative would provide funds to help those couples improve their
skills of conflict resolution so they might actually marry -- and be
equipped to build a healthy marriage. Those skills can be taught by
mentor couples in churches for free. But for the non-religious,
counselors would be paid.'
A year earlier, McManus assured readers that funds provided for the
Healthy Marriage Initiative 'could be used to teach skills to improve
communication and resolve conflict that would make the relationship
happier and lead to a healthy marriage.' He based that assessment on
comments made by HHS's Horn, who, indirectly, served as McManus' boss --
although that relationship was never revealed to readers.
--
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Andrew Herod
Professor of Geography, Adjunct Professor of International Affairs,
and Director, UGA à Paris Study Abroad Program
Department of Geography
University of Georgia
Athens, GA 30602, USA
Ph: + 1 706 542 2856 (main)
+ 1 706 542 2366 (direct)
Fax: + 1 706 542 2388
www.ggy.uga.edu/people/faculty/aherod
www.uga.edu/paris
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