AS THE MEDIA BECOMES AS SILLY AS CAMPAIGN FINANCE:

How the Conservative Columnist Witch Hunt Burned Me (Michael Fumento, January 19, 2006, Townhall)

I was first called by a Times reporter in late December, who accused me of writing a pay-for-play column. I flatly and truthfully denied it. The reporter was flummoxed, having nothing more than an accusation to work with. She kept digging but found nothing.

Weeks later, Eamon Javers of Business Week called and asked about the same column. Again a denial. But by this time my most recent column concerned the exciting biotech products under development by the Monsanto Company, based on a just-released report. Javers asked if I had EVER received money from Monsanto. Sure, I said. It was a $60,000 book grant to my employer, solicited back in 1999, which was applied to pre-established salary and benefits.

Javers then asked if I had acknowledged Monsanto in the book. No, I said. I had called numerous scientists who had helped me to ask how they would like to be acknowledged and one at Monsanto said he'd prefer that both he and the company be left out.

I could have ignored his wishes. But notwithstanding that I live in the backstabbing capital of the world, I kept my knife sheathed. Monsanto had helped me where others would not. I simply referred in my acknowledgments to "others who wish to remain anonymous." Further, acknowledgments are not full disclosure forms; they are personal. Read some.

Javers then took it upon himself to establish, right then, a completely new set of rules regarding columnists disclosure of the receipt of corporate money. All previous standards were null and void.

Under Javers' Rules, there's absolutely no distinction from a book grants to an employer and pay-for-play for individual columns. Further, once you've benefited from a grant you are considered forever in the donor's debt. Never mind that shortly after received the grant I ripped Monsanto for being "chicken-hearted" and caving into environmentalist demands. Therefore the grant must also be disclosed unto eternity – 2006, 2016, 2036, whatever.

This is shown in the very title of Javers' piece. While my grant ended in 2000 and my column began in 2003, I remain forever "A Columnist Backed by Monsanto."

Javers' Rules also declare that any mention of the donor corporation triggers the rules, including a column I wrote devoting a single sentence to Monsanto. And – very importantly – Javers' Rules are retroactive. Your inability to foresee that one day he would invent them is no excuse.

Javers then called my syndicate, Scripps Howard New Service and, discretion being the better part of valor as they say, I was fired. Instantly. No consultation. Intrinsic to witch hunts and the fear they generate is that an accusation is a conviction. Javers accused; Scripps fired.

Only folks about whom we all have as low a regard as we generally do (Mr. Fumento very much excepted) for politicians and the press could think that such absurd standards need apply. You have to be easily bought yourself to imagine others are being so bought.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 20, 2006 7:46 AM