And another thing …
Journalists who just don’t get it. When television and radio commentator Armstrong Williams was busted for his unethical contract with the Bush administration to tout the No Child Left Behind Act in exchange for money, he said he wasn’t alone among commentators with such arrangements.
Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post reports that syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher had a $21,500 contract to work on the president’s “healthy-marriage initiative.” She didn’t tell her readers that when writing marriage-related columns.
Though apparently no money changed hands, William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, and Charles Krauthammer, a syndicated columnist, were invited by the White House to help shape the president’s recent inauguration speech.
Later, Kristol told Fox News viewers that it was, “maybe one of the most powerful speeches, one of the most impressive speeches, I think I’ve seen an American president give.” Krauthammer, also commenting on Fox News, called it a “revolutionary.”
Neither pundit told viewers they were, in part, praising themselves.
It runs through a river. Kootenai County Commissioner Gus Johnson didn’t come right out and say that the Spokane City Council should butt out of the discussion about the wastewater spill at the Burlington Northern & Railway Co.’s refueling depot. But he came close.
“I respect the council,” he said following a recent meeting with railroad executives, “but they’ve got a lot of problems they need to handle on their own.” Johnson was reacting to a proposed Spokane City Council resolution, seeking an independent study of the toxic leak discovered above the region’s sole source of drinking water in December. The resolution passed unanimously this week.
Given the direction in which the aquifer flows, downstream Spokane has every reason to be concerned. Surely, what Johnson meant to say was, “We have the same concerns about the aquifer as Spokane, and I look forward to working with the city to ensure we’re doing the right thing at the depot.”