Press Action Hero of the Week: EAMON JAVERS
Press Action
Friday, January 20, 2006
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/javers01202006/
Eamon Javers, BusinessWeek’s Capitol Hill correspondent, is on a roll. Last month, Javers broke the story about long-time Cato Institute fellow Doug Bandow accepting payments from lobbyist Jack Abramoff for writing op-eds favorable to the positions of some of Abramoff’s clients. In the wake of the revelations, Bandow resigned from Cato and lost his syndicated column deal with Copley News Service.
A month later, Javers was on the trail of Michael Fumento, the Hudson Institute fellow and Scripps Howard News Service columnist who in 1999 solicited and received $60,000 from Monsanto to write a book about the agribusiness and biotechnology industries. Scripps Howard announced Jan. 13 that it had decided to sever its business relationship with Fumento for his apparent failure to disclose the 1999 payment from Monsanto.
Javers, the former editor of Washington Business Forward magazine, is following in the tradition of USA Today reporter Greg Toppo, who broke a story a year ago about how commentator Armstrong Williams had received $240,000 from the U.S. Department of Education to promote the No Child Left Behind law. Armstrong never disclosed these payments from the government when he was writing and speaking favorably about NCLB.
And now Javers’ work appears to have stirred other reporters to engage in similar muckraking. Associated Press reporter Jay Reeves wrote this week that Audry Lewis, a freelance writer, “turned out a stream of sympathetic newspaper stories about former HealthSouth Corp. CEO Richard Scrushy during his fraud trial.” Scrushy “secretly paid her $11,000 through a public relations firm and typically read her articles before publication,” Reeves reported.
Fumento is not happy with Javers. After Fumento told him about the $60,000 book grant, “Javers then called my syndicate, Scripps Howard New Service and, discretion being the better part of valor as they say, I was fired,” Fumento wrote on his personal website. “Instantly. No consultation. Intrinsic to witch hunts and the fear they generate is that an accusation is a conviction. Javers accused; Scripps fired.”
Maybe Scripps Howard shouldn’t have been so hasty in firing Fumento. And maybe Fumento didn’t even deserve to be fired by the syndicate for not disclosing the book grant. But the work of Javers and other reporters, who are exposing how some columnists and commentators are getting paid to promote policies without disclosing the relationships with their sponsors, is certainly a welcome development.