Bush administration/No Child Left Behind shill Armstrong Williams is back in the news as the US Government Accountability Office ruled on Friday that the secret payment of $240,000 he received from the US Department of Education from writing postive articles about NCLB constituted illegal covert propapanda.
The New York Timessaid the report “provided the first definitive ruling on the legality of the activities….In a blistering report, the investigators, from the Government Accountability Office, said the administration had disseminated ‘covert propaganda’ in the United States, in violation of a statutory ban.”
The US Education Department has defended its payments to Williams, saying his commentaries were “no more than the legitimate dissemination of information to the public.”
Editory & Publisher says “the GAO’s report also uncovered a previously undisclosed case in which the Education Department had commissioned a newspaper article. The article, on the “declining science literacy of students,” was distributed by the North American Precis Syndicate and appeared in numerous small newspapers around the country, according to the report in the Times. The government’s role in the writing of the article, which praised the department’s role in promoting science education, was never disclosed.”
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