More on Paid Punditry

More fallout from hidden payment punditry, and there may be much more to come. As Brad DeLong explains, there would be no problem if all financial payments and linkages were fully disclosed. The issue is hiding who is paying for the op-eds, not that payments are made, a distinction that seems lost on those attempting to defend right-wing think tank members engaged in these practices:

Bush Presses Editors on Security, by Howard Kurtz, Washington Post: ...Bought Off? The admission by two columnists that they accepted payments from indicted Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff may be the tip of a large and rather dirty iceberg.

Copley News Service last week dropped Doug Bandow -- who also resigned as a Cato Institute scholar -- after he acknowledged taking as much as $2,000 a pop from Abramoff for up to two dozen columns favorable to the lobbyist's clients. ... Peter Ferrara of the Institute for Policy Innovation has acknowledged taking payments years ago from a half-dozen lobbyists, including Abramoff. Two of his papers, the Washington Times and Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader, have now dropped him. But Ferrara is unapologetic, saying: "There is nothing unethical about taking money from someone and writing an article."

Readers might disagree on grounds that they have no way of knowing about such undisclosed payments, which seem to be an increasingly common tactic for companies trying to influence public debate... When he was a Washington lawyer several years ago, says law professor Glenn Reynolds, a telecommunications carrier offered him a fat paycheck -- up to $20,000, he believes -- to write an opinion piece favorable to its position. He declined. In the case of Bandow's columns, says Reynolds, who now writes the InstaPundit blog, "one argument is, it's probably something he thought anyway, but it doesn't pass the smell test to me. I wouldn't necessarily call it criminal, but it seems wrong. People want to craft a rule, but what you really need is a sense of shame."

Jonathan Adler, an associate law professor and National Review contributor, wrote that when he worked at a think tank, "I was offered cash payments to write op-eds on particular topics by PR firms, lobbyists or corporations several times. They offered $1,000 or more for an op-ed," offers that Adler rejected. Blogger Rand Simberg writes that "I've also declined offers of money to write specific pieces, even though I agreed with the sentiment."...

Comments

[Bruce Wilder]

Is there an economics literature on corruption? In the abstract, how does economics distinguish corruption from other competitive market transactions?

In the world of Washington "think-tanks", my impression is that many of these "institutes" are part of a cottage industry in generating op-eds and talking points. Just from glancing at their website, it is pretty clear to me that IPI is just such a shop. Their principal products are op-eds and two-page "issue briefs". It doesn't look like anyone there has ever produced anything that topped 20 pages in length.

I saw that the NPR ombudsman had tallied up "think tanks" quoted in NPR news reports -- 2/3 were right-wing, one-third centrist (or, in NPR-speak, "center-left"). He was fielding complaints about the failure of NPR reporters to adequately identify the politics of these organizations; why do reporters identify the Lexington Institute, for example, as "Virginia-based" rather than "radically conservative"?

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5053335

It seems to me that the reporters and editors have become complicit not just in giving a false impression of the politics behind these organizations, but the substantive weight. Brookings is a very substantial organization, funding some serious research; the Heritage Foundation, by contrast, is really little more than a bunch of P.R. suits with an over-used fax machine. To label Heritage as conservative and then, Brookings, by contrast, as "liberal" is not exactly hiding the politics, but it is hiding something more important.

Is "disclosure" of funding sources all the disinfectant necessary to this case? And, will that work when IPI and Heritage do not say who is funding them?

It looks to me like IPI and similar organizations exist so that reporters and editors can "source" to a respectable-sounding "institute", even if that "institute" is little more than a office suite off the freeway somewhere.

The question remains in my mind, why do reporters and editors cooperate in this nasty game? I don't think most of them are honest fools, duped by the likes of Peter Ferrara. There's something almost comical about the idea of Ferrara being shunned by the Washington Times -- the whole newspaper is the hobby shop of a megalomaniacal, fascist Korean billionaire cult leader.

[David Smith]

Peter Ferrara sure Innovates Policy --
Innovates ethics completely away.
His journalist's pose is the "anti-Mike-Wallace"; he
Writes what you like if you offer to pay.

When someone's opinions come wrapped in a bank's note,
They'll want more than taking them "under advisement".
A journalist ought to just write a "no-thanks" note,
Or else start the column with "Paid Advertisement".

Peter Ferrara, the Times would've sued ya,
For staining their rep., if, in fact, they had had one.
Perhaps you could write for some rag in Fallujah;
Your briber would then be the Feds -- not a bad one!

-nightquill.blogspot.com

[spencer]

In England corporations are allowed to put a
"member of parliment" on their payroll.

Everyone knows that MP is paid by the business
so that can take that into consideration when the
MP speaks on subjects of interest to that business.

The system seems to work fairly well and is probably a lot less "corupt" then our system.

[dryfly]

This whole thing reminds me of the scene with Claude Raines & Peter Lorrie in 'Casablanca'... shocked, gambling, winnings... nothing changes.

[ken melvin]

As Henry used to say, "Find a need and fill it." These 'journalists' need sources and, as we all know, being a source is ths oldest profession in the world.

[Bruce Webb]

I liked this phrase so much I'll let it stand alone:

"Eight out of ten doctors agree --" means one thing. "The eight out of ten doctors who accepted my money write --" means something else.

Catoites understand the difference. Just as they know the numbers. You can tell by the way they write around them en route to their predetermined conclusions.

[ilsm]

Bruce Wilder,

Corruption is described as a rent.

"rent seeking" is the process to gain easy advantage over competition using bribes in varied forms.

When a corrupt offical favors someone they [ay that person or entity a rent, unearned and corrupt.

[Bruce Wilder]

ilsm: thank you; I had forgotten the pejorative connotations of "economic rent". I don't think the term, "rent", applies in this case, however.

A "rent" is that part of a payment for factor services in excess of either the opportunity cost (Paretian rent) or the amount necessary to bring the factor into productive use (classical rent). It may be that Peter Ferrara is such a complete hack that his labor has no appreciable opportunity cost, or that he is so thoroughly conservative in his convictions that he would produce right-wing drivel, even if no one paid him; in either case, we could suppose that nearly all of the money paid him by Abramoff represents an economic rent. I don't find either supposition, persuasive.

If there is a rent involved, it is associated not with Peter Ferrara's ability and willingness to produce mere words on paper, but to place the words into a newspaper as an "op-ed". It is Ferrara's ability to pose a kind of principled authority, able to legitimate a policy proposal, both by making an argument appealing to conservative philosophical principles, and to place that argument in a forum for the expression of conservative philosophical principles (e.g. the Washington Times or Manchester Union-Leader), which he was "renting" to Abramoff. The thing of it is, that "rent" derives from the legitimacy (try not to laugh) of the outlet, e.g., the Washington Times or the Wall St. Journal editorial page or NRO (I know, I can't help chuckling). In other words, if there is a rent involved here, it is under the control of the publication and, therefore, the publisher. Why is the publisher giving it away to Peter Ferrara?

That analysis makes me wonder why it is Ferrara's "ethics", which are being questioned. It is not Ferrara, alone, who is corrupt. It is the publications involved, which (I suspect) are cooperating in publishing his crap.

That's why I linked to the NPR ombudsman above. There is a general tendency for the Media to cooperate with the conservative "think tanks" in creating an impression of legitimacy for conservative "ideas" and policies. There is a problem of corruption, which goes beyond Ferrara. I just don't know how to analyze "corruption" in a way that identifies all the elements, whatever that full complement of elements might be.

[Mark Thoma]

Bruce W. -

I doubt you have access to JSTOR, but on the chance that you do, this paper Corruption and Development: A Review of Issues from JE Lit might be helpful. I looked, but I couldn't find an open link.

A quick search in Google did turn up this IMF paper Why Worry About Corruption? but I only scanned it...