More Bushie-Paid Columnists Outed

From Editor and Publisher:

First, Copley News Service suspended Doug Bandow's syndicated column. Now two newspapers say they will no longer publish opinion pieces by another conservative commentator who has admitted taking payments from indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff to write opinion pieces favorable to Abramoff's clients.Reuters reports that The Manchester Union Leader and the Washington Times both said they did not know that Peter Ferrara took payments for his pieces.

"Anybody who misrepresents or doesn't voluntarily reveal that they are being paid to write the article by an interested obviously has fallen below the standard that we would hold any published author to," Washington Times editorial page editor Tony Blankley told Reuters.

Ferrara told BusinessWeek Online last week that he takes payments from lobbyists "all the time" to write articles favorable to their clients and did not see anything wrong with that. He did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.