BOB GARFIELD: Last year, the Howard Dean campaign made headlines for its innovative use of the internet. Then, on Friday, the Wall Street Journal quoted Zephyr Teachout, former Dean campaign aide turned blogger, saying that the campaign had at one point hired two bloggers as consultants but was really trying to buy their goodwill. Teachout said the bloggers were never explicitly asked to promote Dean, but ought to reconsider their ethics anyway. Still, in one case, the bloggers ceased to blog while under contract. In the other, involving the author of the very successful blog the Daily Kos, the consultancy was fully and repeatedly disclosed to his readers and anyone else who cared.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: There was no such disclosure for the readers of Armstrong Williams' column or the audiences of his radio and TV shows. They knew he liked the president's No Child Left Behind Act. The conservative black pundit had carved out a niche for himself as the rare minority purveyor of GOP talking points. But they didn't know that he was being paid explicitly to promote it by the Department of Education. Democratic members of Congress howled when the learned of the 240,000 taxpayer dollars funneled to Armstrong to promote No Child Left Behind. The deal has sparked calls for investigation -- since the Bush administration had been found guilty twice before of illegally propagandizing with public money.

BOB GARFIELD: And, of course, the flap has cost Williams his newspaper syndication deal and his journalistic reputation. Joining me now is Deborah Mathis, assistant professor at the Medill School of Journalism, Gannett News Service columnist and sometimes Armstrong Williams' TV foil. Deborah, welcome to On the Media.

DEBORAH MATHIS: Thank you. Happy to be with you.

BOB GARFIELD: For those listeners out there who might never have heard of Armstrong Williams before last week, who is this guy?

DEBORAH MATHIS: He's quite a character, I have to say. He came to Washington from South Carolina as an aide to then-Senator Jesse Helms. He befriended and became a really staunch advocate -- one of the few in the black community of any prominence -- of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. So, he's a diehard conservative, tied in with the Republican Party, helping with the outreach to the black community, and now he's a pariah. [LAUGHS]

BOB GARFIELD: Now, you have a connection to Armstrong Williams, too, cause you've worked with him or, or against him quite a bit over the years, no?

DEBORAH MATHIS: For almost 10 years, he and I were friendly adversaries, I guess you would say, on America's Black Forum, and that program is in about a hundred markets. We agreed on almost nothing, but we did become friends. I learned to like Armstrong, despite our differences.

BOB GARFIELD: Now, what did the education department think it was getting by, by signing this contract with Armstrong?

DEBORAH MATHIS: This is the real kind of irony of this whole thing. Of all the people in black America to carry influence with black Americans, Armstrong Williams was one of the last ones they should have gone to. I mean, they paid the wrong guy. [LAUGHTER] Because black America has always been - and of course I'm speaking in generalities here -greatly suspicious of Armstrong, because he pretty much made a living by being a favorite and a friend of the conservative movement. There are black conservatives who are there to raise a little hell within the established conservative community and to open some eyes, and there are others who are there to go along. And I think Armstrong was seen as one who went along and did so eagerly and was handsomely rewarded for it.

BOB GARFIELD: So on top of all the other sins committed here by the Department of Education, the move was also condescending to imagine that black America would listen to Armstrong Williams just because he happens to be black.

DEBORAH MATHIS: Absolutely. This administration -- and it's not the only one that has ever committed this sin -- but this administration especially does not understand black America. The idea that you can pay someone to say a few kind things in the few seconds that anyone is allowed on a television talk show or in other formats to talk about No Child Left Behind, and to think that the black community will then be swayed without paying attention to what they know to be true in terms of their own children's lives in the schools -- the overcrowding - the unfair testing - the underpaid teachers - the violence in the schools -- all of these things that we will somehow ignore that and be swayed by one black man saying it's a good law shows that there's no real respect or, at the very least, no true understanding of what black America thinks.

BOB GARFIELD: You are one of the rather small universe of nationally distributed black pundits. Is this going to affect you personally?

DEBORAH MATHIS: No. I have heard no generalizations about black reporters, black pundits, black people named Armstrong-- [LAUGHTER] any of that whatsoever -- and that is a function of there having been so many of us now, from so many different areas and takes and styles and experiences - that people are forced to see us as individuals more. It's really hard to see us as one writhing mass of blackness any more.

BOB GARFIELD: Have you spoken to Williams since this story broke?

DEBORAH MATHIS: A couple of times, yes. And he's heartbroken.

BOB GARFIELD: He evidently told David Corn of The Nation that, quote, "this happens all the time." That there are others who have been, you know, on the take from one interest group or another. Did he share with you any of those names?

DEBORAH MATHIS: To my knowledge he has shared names with no one. I don't think that that's a very common practice. I certainly don't think it happens among the ones that are really journalists. Now, who's a journalist these days? So who might he be talking about? I don't know. I think that it behooves the Congress to press on with an investigation about this, because this cannot be. For the sake of government and taxpayers who by no means should be funding propaganda, and it can't be for the sake of media, which does not need another slap.

BOB GARFIELD: Well, Deborah, thanks very much.

DEBORAH MATHIS: Such a pleasure.

BOB GARFIELD: Deborah Mathis teaches at the Medill School of Journalism and writes a national column for the Gannett News Service.