Former Federal Election Commission Chairman Brad Smith thinks not. Here’s what he writes over at DivisionofLabour:
Writers on the Take
–Brad Smith
Tom Giovanetti, President of the Institute for Policy Innovation, has a column up today at National Review Online which defends conservative and libertarian writers, including Doug Bandow and Peter Ferrera, for writing “pay for play” op-eds.
I agree. In fact, I find the flap a bit ridiculous. These columns were, after all, op-eds. The authors made no pretense to being impartial – that’s what “opinion/editorial” means. I recently wrote a column for the Ripon Society magazine because they called me up and asked, “will you write a column arguing that McCain-Feingold has not been successful? We’ll pay you X.” I’ve written many times for USA Today – they always call up and ask, “We’re running an editorial that says Y. We need an opposition column. Would you be interested in writing a column taking Position Z.” And they pay me to do it. Would it really be different if someone else called me up and offered to pay me to write an editorial saying McCain-Feingold was a failure, and they would try to place it in a magazine or on the op-ed page of USA Today?
Giovanetti is right, I think. Bandow et al. were not posing as impartial researchers. And there is no evidence that they wrote anything they disagreed with. This is just another effort by the left to silence those on the right.
I say that Brad (and Giovanetti) are right. How do you get busy people who could write about hundreds of different topics to take up one that you’re particularly interested in? You pay enough to overcome the opportunity cost. What is the problem?
