# 98 Another reporter paid off by Bush to be biased.

I wonder how many media moguls have been paid off to propagandize in favor of Bush initiatives that we don't know about? Conservatives will brush this stuff off as no big deal, especially if it's a program they support, but bribery is still bribery. If Clinton had done this to boost his programs, conservatives would still be howling about it after he's been out of office for four years.

On the bright side, we haven't learned that this reporter is a sodomite - yet.

http://www.drudgereport.com/flash3mg.htm

ANOTHER COLUMNIST WAS PAID TO PROMOTE BUSH PROPOSAL

Tue Jan 25 2005
20:13:59 ET

In 2002, syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher repeatedly defended President Bush's push for a $300 million initiative encouraging marriage as a way of strengthening families.

But Gallagher failed to mention that she had a $21,500 contract with the Department of Health and Human Services to help promote the president's proposal, reveals Howard Kurtz in Wednesday runs of the WASHINGTON POST.

"The Bush marriage initiative would emphasize the importance of marriage to poor couples" and "educate teens on the value of delaying childbearing until marriage," she wrote in National Review Online, for example, adding that this could "carry big payoffs down the road for taxpayers and children.

"Gallagher explains to Kurtz: "Did I violate journalistic ethics by not disclosing it? I don't know. You tell me."

She said she would have "been happy to tell anyone who called me" about the contract but that "frankly, it never occurred to me" to disclose it.

National Review Editor Rich Lowry said of the HHS contract: "We would have preferred that she told us, and we would have disclosed it in her bio."