The best news money can buy: First the Bush administration got busted by the U.S. General Accounting Office for violating a ban on government funded "publicity and propaganda" by using a video news release—i.e. fake news—that supported the No Child Left Behind law. Now it’s been revealed that the White House actually paid a real journalist to fabricate news about the act:

The Bush administration paid a prominent black journalist to promote President Bush's education law and give Education Secretary Rod Paige media time, records show.

Armstrong Williams, a nationally syndicated radio, print and television personality, was paid $240,000 by the Education Department to promote the No Child Left Behind Act.

The contract required Williams' company, the Graham Williams Group, to produce radio and TV ads that promote the controversial law and feature one-minute “reads'' by Paige. The deal also allowed Paige and other department officials to appear as studio guests with Williams.

Williams, one of the leading black conservative voices in the country, was also to use his influence with other black journalists to get them to talk about No Child Left Behind.

...Three Democratic senators - Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Harry Reid of Nevada - wrote Bush Friday to demand he recover the money paid to Armstrong. The lawmakers contended that “the act of bribing journalists to bias their news in favor of government policies undermines the integrity of our democracy.''

..."There is no defense for using taxpayer dollars to pay journalists for 'fake news' and favorable coverage of a federal program,'' said Ralph Neas, president of People for the American Way, a liberal group that has tracked the department's spending. "It's a scandalous waste.''

(Thanks, Andy.)