Chairman Michael Powell ordered an investigation today into whether Armstrong Williams broke the law by failing to disclose he was paid by the Bush Administration to shill their education agenda. I think the key word here is disclose. If you are so inclined please give the story a rate on yahoo, the freepers are doing an excellent job keeping it down.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050115/ap_on_go_ot/fcc_williams
Senators Dorgan and Wyden are asking the GAO to investigate if other paid commentators have been paid for shilling the administrations agenda also. This could get mighty interesting. This is exactly what the right wing conservative media via Bob Novak and WSJ is trying to obsfucate right now.
The icing on the cake is the quote toward the end from Michael Copps.
Also Friday, two Democratic senators asked the Government Accountability Office, Congress' investigative arm, to review whether any other federal agencies have paid commentators to support the administration's agenda.
Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate whether the Education Department's payment to Williams violated a ban on propaganda -- and, if so, to determine who should be held accountable.
"There are real questions whether this is a real expenditure," Dorgan said in an interview. "This has all the makings of political payola."...
"In this era of huge corporate media, it is becoming harder and harder to tell the difference between news and entertainment, to differentiate between information and propaganda," FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, a Democrat, said Friday.