Ethics Smethics

This article about tax payer dollars paying syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher to promote marriage really troubles me.

Maybe Ted Turner really wasn't so wrong in his assertion that the Bush administration has a full-on propoganda machine constantly working to push Dubya's agenda.

I researched Maggie Gallagher (who says she just forgot to mention it) and found this:

People who argue for creating gay marriage do so in the name of high ideals: justice, compassion, fairness. Their sincerity is not in question. Nevertheless, to take the already troubled institution most responsible for the protection of children and throw out its most basic presumption in order to further adult interests in sexual freedom would not be high-minded. It would be morally callous and socially irresponsible.

Morally callous and socially irresoponsible? I guess being on the dole doesn't fit that definition.

PROPAGANDA

Etymology: New Latin, from Congregatio de propaganda fide -- Congregation for propagating the faith, organization established by Pope Gregory XV died 1623

The spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person

Ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one's cause or to damage an opposing cause; also : a public action having such an effect

--------------------------------------------

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."