Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell ordered an investigation yesterday into whether conservative commentator Armstrong Williams broke the law by failing to disclose he was paid by the Bush administration to plug the president's education agenda.
The investigation relates to provisions that require disclosure of such arrangements, Powell said in a brief statement.
Armstrong Williams was hired to promote No Child Left Behind.
(Lucian Perkins -- The Washington Post)
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The announcement came as FCC officials said thousands of complaints regarding Williams had come into the agency. No precise number was available yesterday. Free Press, a media reform advocacy group, had said it was forwarding more than 12,000 complaints to the FCC.
"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 said yesterday.
Williams hosts a syndicated radio show, "The Right Side," and frequently discusses politics on CNN and other networks.
An investigation could extend to the stations that carried the program if the broadcaster knew of Williams's arrangement but did not make that clear to viewers, FCC officials have said.
Also yesterday, Sens. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked the Government Accountability Office to review whether any other federal agencies have paid commentators to support the administration's agenda.
They also asked the GAO to investigate whether the Education Department 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."
The FCC and GAO probes are the latest in a growing controversy over Williams's deal with the Education Department to promote the No Child Left Behind Act.
Williams was paid $240,000 as part of at least a $1.3 million commitment the department had with a public relations firm, Ketchum. Williams produced ads with Education Secretary Rod Paige to promote the controversial law.
He was also hired to provide media time to Paige and to persuade African Americans in media to talk about the sweeping education revisions, records show.
Associated Press writer Ben Feller contributed to this report.
