In the Fog of War, A Moral Haze

Monsanto's Man?

Another columnist has lost his writing gig for failing to disclose corporate payments.

Scripps Howard News Service last week dropped Michael Fumento, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, after BusinessWeek Online raised questions about a $60,000 grant that the institute received from the agribusiness company Monsanto. Fumento told the magazine he solicited the 1999 payment from Monsanto for his book on agribusiness, titled "BioEvolution."

Fumento says he sees no disclosure issue: "I went to [Monsanto] and some others and said, 'I'm going to write a book supporting biotech. Are you willing to support it?' And one company said yes. They knew they'd come out looking good, so it made perfect sense." He says he didn't mention the grant in the book because "Monsanto asked me not to. I felt it'd literally be kicking them right smack in the teeth."

Fumento also says he had no obligation to tell Scripps Howard or disclose the funding in columns involving Monsanto, particularly after several years. "Someone would say, 'He mentioned Monsanto products and then it says at the bottom he received money from Monsanto, and therefore he's just a corporate whore.' That would be used against me."

In a Jan. 5 column for Scripps Howard, which has now apologized to readers, Fumento wrote that many bioengineered crops being developed by Monsanto "will primarily aid farmers, but they also help all of us by keeping prices down and allowing more crops to be grown on less land." After touting other Monsanto products, he wrote: "I chose to focus on Monsanto for lack of space and because their annual report was plopped onto my lap while I was hunting for a column idea."

Fumento has been defending the company for years. In a 2000 piece that ran in the Washington Times, he noted: "Monsanto has developed a canola oil that is also packed with beta-carotene."

His situation is different from other recent cases, Fumento insists, because he approached the company, not vice versa. Last month, Copley News Service dropped columnist Doug Bandow -- who also resigned as a Cato Institute scholar -- after he acknowledged taking as much as $2,000 apiece from convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff for up to two dozen columns favorable to the lobbyist's clients. The Washington Times and New Hampshire's Manchester Union Leader dropped another columnist, Peter Ferrara, who acknowledged taking payments from Abramoff.

Never Mind

Tom Blumer, who critiques the press on BizzyBlog, which is also carried by the conservative Media Research Center, ripped this columnist for last week's piece on mine safety reporting -- and particularly for spotlighting the aggressive efforts of Ken Ward of West Virginia's Charleston Gazette.

"Kurtz Passes Off Activist as 'Persistent Reporter,' " the headline said. "The most cursory of searches on Ken Ward," wrote Blumer, an Ohio accountant, reveals that "he is a longtime environmental activist who just happens to have a job as a reporter," having worked for the likes of Greenpeace USA and the National Environmental Law Center.

Pretty cursory indeed. Turns out that is another Ken Ward.

After a complaint from Ward the journalist, Blumer wrote that "I intensely regret, am mortified by" the error and apologized to Ward, this columnist and The Post. He said by e-mail: "In future situations, I will contact the person involved if I think there's even the slightest chance that I might be inadvertently linking to the work of more than one person that happens to have an identical or near-identical name. As a less-than-one-year blogger, I've used up my allocation of rookie mistakes."

Ward says his job covering the coal industry is "hard enough without having someone spread idiotic rumors like that."

Howzat?

"Alexander Strategy Group: Still Signing Up New Clients" -- Roll Call, Jan. 9

"Lobby Firm Is Scandal Casualty; Abramoff, DeLay Publicity Blamed for Shutdown" -- Washington Post, Jan. 10