Al-Hurra Payments

Dafna Linzer and Paul Kiel follow up on their al-Hurra reporting noting that a number of media and political figures have gotten cash money from al-Hurra in exchange for appearing on the network. Now to be fair, a lot of the people who've gotten this money (David Corn, say) are hardly administration shills. But it's an inherently problematic situation for a government-run entity to be in -- it naturally tends to build goodwill and shield the network from much-needed scrutiny.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2008/06/al-hurra-payments/48920/