By Earl Ofari Hutchinson, BlackNews.com Columnist

There is absolutely no defense of Armstrong Williams' disgraceful and greedy grab of public money from the Education Department to tout President Bush's No Child Left Behind law while posing as an objective, independent journalist.

Even Williams didn't defend his actions. In a kind of, sort of apology, he admitted that the storm of criticism his money grub drew was legitimate.

If a journalist is caught with his or her hands in the government till, newspapers should do what the Tribune Media Services that distributes William's column did and dump them.

Media outlets should do what CNN said they would do and determine whether the journalists and commentators they use on their news shows are giving their honest views on issues or are bought and paid pitch men and women for government agencies. If they are they should dump them too.

If Congressional Democrats are as outraged as they say they are about William's media machinations, they will demand that Williams repay the money, (he says he won't), that Bush prohibit government agencies from paying journalists for faking news about their programs, and ferret out any other journalists that have shilled for government agencies.

Last year Bush officials ladled out thousands to the firm that contracted with Williams to promote its Medicare prescription drug plan. This was also disguised as news. The Government Accounting Office called that illegal, but it did not require that the money be repaid, or that Bush officials stop the practice.

There's little reason to think that it will do much about William's money grab either.

Williams is a black conservative, and since his tenure as an aide to South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, and later to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, he has been conservative talk radio and TV's media darling.

He, as other black conservatives, is given free license to say and do whatever they please as long as they faithfully toe the conservative line.

That means cheerleading Bush administration's policies, and to act as hatchet men and women to bash blacks, liberals, women's groups and gays.

If they do there job well enough in addition to getting frequent and top billing on talk shows, they're guaranteed op-ed spots in mainstream dailies, they may land their own syndicated TV talk show as Williams did, and they'll be showered with lucrative book deals and dubious government contracts.

Conservatives desperately need blacks such as Williams to maintain the public pretense that black conservatives have real clout and a popular following in black communities. The black conservatives in turn parlay their media-created celebrity to corral other unsuspecting, as Williams did on his talk show, or willing black personalities and journalists into endorsing Bush policies.

They dangle the prospect that if they play ball they too can line their pockets with government goodies.

Their greatest value, though, is that they promote the myth that a big segment of blacks support Bush's policies.

In the last election, Republicans spent millions on outreach efforts to African-American voters. They employed Williams, and a handful of other blacks, to loudly tout Bush policies. Yet, Bush got only a marginal bump-up in black support nationally.

Even though many blacks, especially black evangelicals, oppose gay marriage and abortion, polls still showed that the overwhelming majority of them disagreed with Bush's domestic and foreign policies, and backed Democrat John Kerry.

Williams is also likely to skip away with little more than a spate of bad publicity and a hand slap for another reason.

During the past decade the major networks have shamelessly blurred the line between news and corporate and government infomercials. At the eleventh hour of the presidential campaign, Sinclair Broadcasting announced that it would air a program on its TV stations that falsified the Vietnam War record of Kerry in order to torpedo his candidacy.

The Clear Channel Network bankrolled billboards praising Bush, and the gaggle of right wing talk radio shock jocks blatantly promoted Bush's reelection.

The FCC, which went berserk over a momentary glimpse of Janet Jackson's breast, and curse words by rock stars, has knuckled under and given the media conglomerates free rein to bombard the public with daily partisan political blather.

Williams has drawn heat from media watchdog groups. They have long complained that much of the media has become little more than hucksters for conservative views and Bush policies, and that it has been so bullied by conservative media advocacy groups that it is scared stiff to say and do anything that will get them in hot water with the Bush administration.

Still, the Williams controversy has cast an ugly glare on the Bush administration's horrible practice of masquerading partisan political propaganda as news and misusing taxpayer dollars to do it. Though Democrats and media watchdog groups can't do much to stop the networks from blurring the line between legitimate news and paid government infomercials, they should demand that taxpayer's dollars aren't used to aid and abet the blurring of that line.

Williams did just that and he bear full blame for it.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is a featured columnist for BlackNews.com, and is the publisher of The Hutchinson Report Newsletter.