Gallagher Criticizes 'WP' Article (denies charges); Kurtz Rebuts

[truthpusher]

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ep/20050126/en_bpiep/gallaghercriticizeswparticlekurtzrebuts

Gallagher Criticizes 'WP' Article; Kurtz Rebuts

Wed Jan 26, 6:25 PM ET Entertainment - Editor and Publisher

NEW YORK Maggie Gallagher released a statement this afternoon taking issue with aspects of the Washington Post article by Howard Kurtz that today broke the news that she received $21,500 from the Department of Health and Human Services (news - web sites) for marriage-themed writing projects. She called one of Kurtz passages "completely false."

(snip)

Here are Gallagher's comments, followed by Kurtz':

"On January 26, 2005, Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post wrote that I 'had a $21,500 contract with the Department of Health and Human Services to help promote the President's proposal.'

"To me, this is an extremely serious charge. It is also completely false. I was not paid to promote the President's marriage proposal. In 2001 I was approached by HHS to do research and writing, not on the President's $300 million marriage initiative, but on marriage: specifically four brochures on the social-science evidence on the benefits of marriage for populations serviced by HHS (such as unwed parents), a draft of an essay for Wade Horn, and a training presentation on the social-science evidence on the benefits of marriage for regional HHS managers.

(snip)

"I did not and would not accept any payment to promote anyone else's policies of any kind in my newspaper column or anywhere else. Moreover on Jan. 25, I offered Howard Kurtz copies of my contract and invoice as documentation of my work product. He had also received a copy of my Jan. 25 column, explaining the exact nature of the work I performed, before he filed his story.

more:

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ep/20050126/en_bpiep/gallaghercriticizeswparticlekurtzrebuts

[roguevalley]

1. semantics. She needs to shut up and fry, the hypocrite.

[MSgt213]

6. It's not even semantics. The originally story contained all those things

she said it didn't. Her problem might be that it wasn't spun the way she wanted it.

[IndianaGreen]

2. If Kurtz lied, then Gallagher can sue him for libel

But she won't because she did take the money and she did act as a mouthpiece of the Bush regime. Tart!

[Cooley Hurd]

4. Funny how repukes always call their detractors "liars..."

...yet never ever file libel suits.

David Brock supposedly lied in "Blinded By the Right," yet was never sued for libel.

Michael Moore supposedly lied in "F9/11," yet no suits against him were ever filed.

Richard Clarke and Paul O'Neill: "liars" but unchallenged...

[mudderfudder77]

21. To be fair...

Kerry never sued the swift boats either...

[enki23]

3. oh, that's fucking rich

these republican fucking swine have a lot of nerve these days.

[Just Me]

5. Uh hum. Some more hocus pocus rationalizations and denials.

Creating four brochures on benefits of marriage have nothing to do with a marriage initiative policy being asserted by *

Wrap your brain around that rock-solid bullshit. *LOL*

These folks really do drink the same kool-aid or, at minimum, take the same psychotropic drugs.

[rodeodance]

8. "sure sounds like promotion to me,"---I agree

.....In response, Kurtz told E&P: "It's too bad that Maggie Gallagher, in the process of apologizing for her mistake, has seen fit to blame the messenger. My story made quite clear that her work at HHS included writing brochures for the President's marriage initiative, ghostwriting a magazine article for a top official, and briefing other department officials on the issue. That sure sounds like promotion to me, but none of this would be a media controversy had Ms. Gallagher disclosed the contract in her writing trumpeting the Bush marriage plan."


The Universal Press Syndicate-distributed Gallagher, when reached by E&P, declined to comment beyond her e-mailed statement.

[onenote]

7. greedy hypocrites

Don't you just love how the same conservatives that scream about "big government, free-spending liberals" don't hesitate to take taxpayer money to do things that they later claim that they would have done anyway? Pigs....

onenote

[rodeodance]

9. I really thought I had heard it all--but I have to say, they keep stunning

me with their "compassion"---LACK OF!!

[calimary]

12. Well, onenote - your name could be onesentence. You sure summed

this up in a VERY neat little package.

That is EXACTLY what they do. They absolutely abhor seeing government money doled out unnecessarily to the "undeserving" - unless it's to THEMSELVES. Nice encapsulation you wrote. Greedy hypocrites they ARE. And MY, how they squeal when they're called out on it.

I wonder what the next bait-n-distract issue will be - to take little Miss Maggie's name off the fire? The last time Armstrong Williams was feeling the heat, we all of a sudden had a firestorm of Dan Rather Revisited. And after that - it was Armstrong Who? Huh? Whaddya talking about? I don't know anything about any Armstrong? Armstrong? WHAT Armstrong? NEXT!

[jobycom]

10. Actually, sounds like a fair defense to me

The issue with Armstrong was that he took a contract to promote Bush in his weekly columns, where the contract specifically called for him to promote Bush under the guise of journalism. At least, that's how I understood the story. Now I wonder if I understood it wrong.

If Gallagher is telling the truth-- and Kurtz has not disputed her, and has even agreed that she is only backing up what he said-- then she didn't take a contract to push a Bush program in her writing, under her name as a journalist or columnist. She did separate research work for the HHS as a long-time recognized expert on the field, and while she certainly took money to write promotional material, she didn't disquise that material as part of her column, or her journalistic work. She just took a freelance job on the side, and it backed up an opinion she already held. IF she's giving full disclosure now, I don't see a big issue. It's no different than a free-lance writer doing business brochures, then also selling an article to another magazine using the research from the advertising work. That's done all the time.

She should have disclosure in her articles backing the marriage thingie, of course, but that's not as great an error as taking money to promote the issue in her columns, as Armstrong is alleged to have done.

Now, if she's lying, if she was paid to promote the marriage dohicky in her column, that's a different story. But that's not what she or Kurtz is saying now.

She does seem to be whipping up on Kurtz for no good reason, though. Seems like her problem with Kurtz is the tone of his article, not the facts. She should just explain her actions, and leave the animosity out of it.

This is how Bush and Rove are going to save this issue for themselves. First, Bush is going to say he had nothing to do with it and wouldn't support it if he did. Wink. And Rove is going to slowly leak info to the press about minor columnists, to start a feeding frenzy, then he's going to get these columnists to offer defenses like this, and soon the nation will be too bored with all the technical ethical introspection and the issue goes away, and by the end of 2006, all journalism in America will be sponsored by the government of corporations. Not that it isn't now, but it will be more obvious, and no one will care.

[Name removed]

11. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[stanwyck]

13. Thanks, Maggie,

for giving your pathetic little story some more time. More people need to know how you primarily recycle press releases, then collect from the Bushies and your syndicate. Kudos on the double-dipping. And for being so lazy you just take the Bushie line and regurgitate as a "column". Your work ethic is inspiring.

[librechik]

14. weasel words 1

honesty and integrity zero

[merh]

15. I would love to get paid to research & write brochures at

$5,000 a piece. That would be a nice take for a simple project, especially considering the fact that the DHS has all of the statistics and research at my disposal.

"research and writing,.... specifically four brochures on the social-science evidence on the benefits of marriage".

What a liar.

[blm]

16. Wade Horn worked with Moonie marriage seminars for years before Bush

tapped him for the White House program which just happens to be BASED on RevMoon's programs.

THAT is the unreported REAL story of Bush's marriage program. Marriage is to be entered into for the good of society, not for love, and they'll even match you up with someone deemed suitable.

Mass weddings on the National Mall, anyone?

[AirAmFan]

23. Gallagher's just the tip of the iceberg of scandalous spending by Horn

Wade Horn's absolutely ridiculous theory of marriage as a panacea for poor people's problems. is soaking up MILLIONS of dollars taken out of poor children's food and clothing under "welfare reform". Actual MOONIES trained at the Unification Church Seminary in NY are PROMINENT on Wade Horn's STAFF and among his grant awardees.

This is a great issue, because it riles jealous fundies who oppose Moon as much as it stirs up the ACLU and PFAW. The SF Chronicle had a great article about scandalous Moonie staffing and funding by Horn in October, but no other major newspaper picked up the story:

(From http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/10/03/MOON.TMP ):

'Moonies knee-deep in faith-based funding Pushing celibacy, marriage counseling under Bush plan

"At least four longtime operatives of Moon's Unification Church are on the federal payroll or getting government grants in the administration's Healthy Marriage Initiative and other "faith-based" programs. Two of those Moon associates were in Oakland last week leading dozens of local pastors and social workers enrolled in a "Certified Marriage Education Training Seminar" at the Holiday Inn next to the Coliseum....'

[blm]

24. That IS the great UNTOLD story behind Bush's Moonie "marriage" program.

.

[realFedUp]

17. Maggie's words on Gore from dailyhower.com

www.dailyhowler.com
Friday, Jan. 28

WHO IS MAGGIE GALLAGHER: Maggie Gallagher, “marriage expert,” is also a nasty, angry woman with a ripe, smut-lovin’ mouth. Example? In November 1999, she leaped into action when the press corps ginned up its phony Naomi Wolf flap. Many pundits played the smut card in their phony campaign against Wolf (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 3/3/03), and Gallagher brought an especially loud mouth to the crowded table. In a November 6, 1999 Washington Times column, the “marriage expert” directly addressed Gore. “So now I hear you've gone out and hired a feminist babe with big hair, friend of your daughter, to help boost your MQ (that's ‘masculinity quotient’ to you outside the Beltway),” she wrote. In the course of her column, she characterized Wolf, a former Rhodes Scholar, as “this pretty little writer thing (don't get me wrong, smart too, gives real good pen) who's going to teach you how to be a man” and she said that Gore had been “looking for manly sex tips from a girl.” After an inexcusable comparison to Monica Lewinsky (such comparisons were required in Gallagher’s smutty cohort), our expert again called Wolf a girl: “Al, baby, the really big problem here is that you are going to a girl to get advice on how to be a man.” At the time, Wolf—the “girl,” who “gives good pen”—was a 37-year-old, world-acclaimed writer, the married mother of a young child. But so what? “Marriage experts” like Maggie Gallagher will continue to degrade our public discourse as long as their colleagues in the mainstream press corps prefer to stare off into air.

[Supersedeas]

18. the hypcritical champion of the family values crowd

keep your fake menstration away from me

[Robbien]

19. As long as their colleagues prefer to stare off into the air

Just had to repeat it.

Any pundit who does not condemn Maggie Gallagher is suspect as a dirty payola propadanda pusher.

[AspenRose]

20. Did anyone see her on the Newshour last night with Gwen Awful...

Gallagher couldn't shut up long enough to let anyone else get a word in edgewise....she was positively manic....even Gwen said something to the effect of "you're doing a good job defending yourself BUT we'd like to hear from our other guests...."

Wind down, girl, and face the music: You're busted.

[VegasWolf]

22. She's worried about losing her stupid column all over a mere $21,000

bribe,