Friday, January 28, 2005

Where is the outrage?

Maggie says:
Kudos to Salon, who busted the third journalist proven to have been paid off by the Bush administration to promote their policies. So now we have three journalists - Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher, and Michael McManus - who were paid $271,000 in total to write bogus columns touting No Child Left Behind and Bush's marriage initative.

Apparently Bush just ordered his cabinet secretaries to stop this practice, so I guess we're all supposed to be appeased. But why aren't more people outraged about this? Whatever happened to journalists having respect for their profession, for the truth, and for themselves? Why is no one really apologizing for this, really understanding how wrong this is and why it's so wrong? And why aren't people pissed as hell that in a major recession and budget crisis, money is being spent on public information scams instead of social services or paying off our debts?

And p.s. to Gallagher: being paid off by Bush&Co to praise their marriage iniatives is not "taking part in a government-funded research project" - it's being a prostitute for the president and a traitor to your profession.