ETHICS
Enron's Helpers
"Here's a story for any aggressive media reporter," Andrew Sullivan wrote on his Web site (www.andrewsullivan.com) on January 21. "Exactly how many pundits have been on Enron's payroll? How many of them have disclosed that fact in their relevant publications? How much was each paid?"
Few media reporters accepted Sullivan's challenge. The New York Times had reported on January 16 that columnist Paul Krugman received $50,000 as an Enron adviser before joining the paper. For the next three days, though, media critics remained largely silent. So Sullivan, a senior editor at The New Republic, began his own investigation, helping to expose a ring of pundits and journalists that served on an Enron advisory board.
Krugman had disclosed his association with Enron in The New York Times more than a year ago, on January 24, 2001. Sullivan, however, thought Krugman and other members of the board should also disclose what America's seventh largest corporation paid them. Opinion leaders responded to this dare with what the media critic Howard Kurtz called "varying degrees of candor."
Irwin Stelzer — a contributor to The Weekly Standard and The Sunday Times of London who complimented Enron on November 26, 2001, for "leading the fight for competition" — disclosed his association with the corporation and that of The Weekly Standard editor William Kristol last November.
Stelzer has written many times about Enron for other publications, but never divulged his association to readers until November 27. Sullivan repeatedly e-mailed and phoned Stelzer, asking how much he was paid for his work, but Stelzer did not respond.
William Kristol did respond to Sullivan, though, e-mailing him on January 22 to say that he received more than $100,000 from Enron. "I'm a little unhappy to have had an association with people who turned out to be not entirely honorable in other dealings," Kristol later said.
Two more pundits soon acknowledged their associations with Enron. Larry Kudlow, of CNBC and National Review, wrote in National Review Online on January 22 that he received $50,000 for a consulting fee and two speeches. The Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan disclosed on January 25 that she worked on a speech with Enron ceo Ken Lay in 1997. Noonan says she billed Enron "$250 an hour for the 100 to 200 hours" she worked. "C'mon, Peggy," Sullivan responded to this vague disclosure, "You should have a 1099 hanging around somewhere. You didn't shred it, did you?"
Sullivan soon drew some fire himself. Michelangelo Signorile argued in the New York Press that the financial contributions of a man named Charles Francis to Sullivan's Web site make Sullivan's criticisms of Enron advisers inconsistent. Francis is a public relations executive who helped organize the Republican Unity Coalition, a group dedicated to strengthening ties between the gay community and the Republican party. Sullivan neglected to mention Francis's contribution when he praised Francis's Unity work in a brief blurb on December 14. Sullivan does list Francis as a "$1,000 or more" donor elsewhere on his site.
Nonetheless, along with the New York Press and Kurtz's column
in The Washington Post, Sullivan's investigation and sharp commentary
helped spark a debate about the Enron advisory board in publications
such as Slate, Salon, and USA Today. And, maybe, he helped make
journalists think twice about what companies really want when
they pay for advice.
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