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Edited on Fri Jan-27-06 01:47 PM by KoKo01
Amid mounting interest in when and why corporations pay for congressional travel, one small slice of Washington's ways has escaped notice — media companies themselves sometimes foot the bill.
The Sunday morning news shows routinely pay travel costs, from car fare to airfare, to get politicians into their studios, a review of congressional disclosure forms shows.
But chartering expensive jets to amuse a few million political junkies is rare.
NBC's "Meet the Press" occasionally digs deep, paying $9,550 in travel costs to interview Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., in 2000 and $9,000 to question Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., in person in 2001. "Face the Nation" and "This Week" also have chartered flights, spokeswomen said.
Large travel payments, a legal gift under congressional rules, nonetheless raise ethical questions.
"There's an obvious potential for a conflict of interest here, and that is we might appear to the public to be paying for access," said Al Tompkins, a teacher at the Poynter Institute school for journalists and author of "Newsroom Ethics" for the Radio-Television News Directors Association.
The size of the Fox News payment, and the program's failure to disclose the $13,998.55 cost on the air, also troubled Tompkins.
"I do not think that it would be an obvious violation of any code of ethics if they paid a usual or customary cost — for example, if they even paid a first-class airfare," he said.
Paul Schur, a Fox News spokesman, said it was important to have DeLay in the studio with Wallace.
"Because DeLay was an exclusive and a sole guest, conducting the interview via satellite would've undercut the quality of production," Schur said. "The other choice was to fly an entire crew to Sugar Land, and it would've cost double."
Schur recalled only one other chartered flight for a member of Congress — Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., in 1996.
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