Framing Allbaugh
The NYT framed a story on post-Katrina contracts in a way that disparaged Joseph Allbaugh:
More than 80 percent of the $1.5 billion in contracts signed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency alone were awarded without bidding or with limited competition, government records show, provoking concerns among auditors and government officials about the potential for favoritism or abuse.
Already, questions have been raised about the political connections of two major contractors – the Shaw Group and Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton – that have been represented by the lobbyist Joe M. Allbaugh, President Bush’s former campaign manager and a former leader of FEMA.
“When you do something like this, you do increase the vulnerability for fraud, plain waste, abuse and mismanagement,” said Richard L. Skinner, the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, who said 60 members of his staff were examining Hurricane Katrina contracts. “We are very apprehensive about what we are seeing.”
The NYT clearly wants us to be suspicious about Allbaugh, though it already knew at the time it published the story that Allbaugh did not represent these companies in federal contracting. Here is the Times’ correction:
In naming these contractors – the Shaw Group and Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton – the article noted that they have been represented by the lobbyist Joe M. Allbaugh, President Bush’s former campaign manager and a former leader of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The article should have carried a response from Mr. Allbaugh, or restated a position he expressed in an earlier article in The Times: that he does not help any of his clients secure federal contracts, and has not done so in this case for Shaw or Kellogg.
So why write the story to implicate Allbaugh, and Bush, though the Times knew that Allbaugh was not involved in these contracts? Well, you know the answer to that one.
But that is not the worst transgression of the NYT in the article. Notice the big, fat, hanging fastball — Halliburton — that the Times serves up. Often, the NYT mentions Vice President Cheney when it mentions Halliburton, but not in this piece. Why? One explanation might be this: if the NYT mentioned Cheney as the former CEO of Halliburton, it might have been journalistically obliged to do the same for the other contract recipient it mentioned, the Shaw Group. Goodness knows the NYT might not have wanted to mention the Chairman of the Louisiana Democrtatic Party in a piece implying Republican contracting skullduggery:
About Our Chairman
J. M. Bernhard, Jr. is the Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The Shaw Group Inc., a Fortune 500 company offering a broad range of services to the power, process, environmental, infrastructure and emergency response markets. The Company’s stock is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “SGR.” Under Mr. Bernhard’s leadership, The Shaw Group has grown dramatically and through a series of strategic acquisitions to over $3 billion in revenues since its inception in 1987. Shaw is one of the youngest companies to be named to the Fortune 500 and recently debuted on the magazine’s list of “America’s Most Admired Companies”. Headquartered in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the Company employs over 18,000 people…..
Mr. Bernhard was recently selected as Chairman of the Louisiana Democratic Party. He co-chaired the transition team for the governor of Louisiana, Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco. Mr. Bernhard is also a member of Select Council for Revenues and Expenditures (SECURE) for Louisiana’s Future and serves on the Committee of 100 for the State of Louisiana.
The NYT hurts its own cause by such antics.
UPDATE
Tom McGuire reports that Bernhard steped down from being Louisiana Democratic Party Chairman on September 17. We are absolutely certain that this timing had nothing to do with the contracts awarded to the Shaw Group.