UPDATE: Juan Cole has no government contract. See update section below:
There is some discussion in the blogsphere, recapped below, about experts who give ‘independent’ public opinions on Middle East affairs while having financial income by lobbying for partisan groups involved in these affairs, or from U.S. government related partisan entities.
The discussion illustrates that partisan financial relations, not disclosed voluntarily and preemptively but becoming public otherwise, arouses suspicions how far an expert can be trusted as an independent source of knowledge and valid opinions.
When the author of one of the most influential Middle East blogs, Professor Juan Cole, does undisclosed consulting work for the CIA and the State Department while offering ‘independent’ expert opinions in commercial media like Salon and Asia Times Online and at his blog questions may come up.
First let us recap the current discussions:
Blogging for Salon, Glenn Greenwald explains How our seedy, corrupt Washington establishment operates. His case is about Philip Zelikow, former counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who next to his job at the University of Virginia, consults for a partisan lobbying firm and gives ‘independent’ expert opinions to the media. While Zelikow was opining about ‘leadership change’ in Iraq in an ABC interview, the lobbying firm has a big contract with Iyat Allawi, who wants to be the ‘new leader’ in Iraq.
Laura Rozen writes that Zelikow, a former teacher of hers, denies to have known about the Allawi contract while punditing for ABC:
My sense is if Zelikow made a mistake, it was not one of concealing a conflict of interest, because he not only wasn’t working on the BGR Allawi account, but didn’t know about it at the time he was interviewed; but rather that he didn’t preempt the perception of a possible conflict of interest, and that the best thing would have been to make sure the media knew about his BGR work. The argument that he’s deceitful strikes me as totally unfair. As he says, it’s "hard to see how to preempt the conflict if you don’t know there is one. If they brought up the Kurds, different story."
Zelikow may not have been deceitful, but he should have disclosed his general relations to a lobbying firm that works on the issues he talks about, and the Kurds are certainly involved here too, as a seemingly ‘independent’ expert.
Another case is Mike O’Hanlon. Steve Clemons, guestblogging at Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish, points out that O’Hanlon gets paid by a U.S. government TV station in the Middle East, while writing ‘independent’ pro-"surge" op-eds in the New York Times and the Washington Post.
I’ve also recently learned that Mike O’Hanlon is under contract with the US government’s propaganda network, Alhurra. I’m not quite sure what I think about that yet — but it’s something that ought to be in the open.
That case, like Zelikow’s, is a bit murky too. A commentator at Kevin Drum’s Political Animal remarks that O’Hanlon may just collect simple ‘stipends’ everybody who pundits at Al’Hurra is getting too. While ‘stipends’ may be less than a full contract, I thinks this should have been disclosed by O’Hanlon, if only to avoid any suspicion of undue influence.
O’Hanlon gets his main paycheck from the Brookings Institute, Zelikow from the University of Virginia. If they make extra money working on lobbying cases, or ‘stipends’ for slots at a government TV station, they should disclose this when they opine as neutral ‘experts’ in the public media, be it on TV, in op-eds or at well traveled blogs.
Not doing so lessens the value of their judgements.
Which brings me to a third case no blogger at Salon or elsewhere seems to bother about.
Juan Cole is Professor at the University of Michigan and blogs at Informed Comment. Neither at his site nor on his personal page does Cole disclose any work for the government. There is no mentioning of Cole’s government consulting in his regular Salon columns either.
But last week Cole appeared at the New America Foundation to talk about his new book on Napoleon’s occupation of Egypt and how this relates to current affairs. The event was covered by Cspan and video is available at the foundations site and also linked at Cole’s blog.
Cole is introduced by Steve Clemons, a director at the foundation. Clemons lauds (my transcription):
I’ve been fortunate to have had -mostly a virtual- relationship, with Juan Cole by blogging and email, but we become buddies of a sort whenever I find out that he is coming through Washington – very frequently to help our government have, you know, better sensors and benchmarks of what’s going on over there.
[…]
And as I said in the beginning, one of the things that does give me some hope, now and than, is that Juan does come through Washington, is talking to people of significants in our intelligence and foreign policy bureaucracies and is trying to educate them on what is going on. Weather they are listening and implementing anything he is saying, is an entirely different subject for perhaps another day. But without further ado please help me welcome Juan Cole.
Maybe Juan Cole flies very frequently to Washington to educate the CIA and State Department for a cup of cold coffee and a warm handshake – I don’t know. More likely though is that he does get some financial compensation.
Whatever it is, he should have disclosed this publicly on his blog and in his other writings.
A good example how experts can and should explain their relationships was recently given by Anthony Cordesman, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Within an oped on Arming Arab States in the NYT and IHT, Cordesman writes:
Disclosure: the nonprofit organization I work for receives financing from many sources, including the United States government, Saudi Arabia and Israel. No one from any of those sources has asked me to write this article.
That is the way Zelikow and O’Hanlon should also have disclosed their financial relationship with partisan lobbying firms and government propaganda institutions.
It is also the way Juan Cole should disclose his "very frequent" trips to Washington and his work for "intelligence and foreign policy bureaucracies" there.
Salon, where not only Greenwald but also Joan Walsh opines on ABC News: Zelikow didn’t disclose lobbying role, should also disclose that their frequent columnist Juan Cole is a government consultant.
When will Juan Cole disclose his government contracts?
When will Salon do so?
Must we finally have that blogger ethics panel?
UPDATE:
I emailed Juan Cole asking about contracts and he answered:
Steve was being hyperbolic. I don’t
consult with the administration.As a public intellectual and an employee
of the state of Michigan paid by the people to tell them about the Middle East,
I tell all kinds of people about the Middle East. There are occasions on which
government people (mainly GS 13s probably) are in the audience. I don’t have a
contract with the government and they would hear the same thing if they came to
a Middle East Studies Association conference.I think if the government gave me a
contract or I formally worked for a subcontractor (which by my University
contract I could do 4 days a week), that should be disclosed. That some think
tank asked me to speak and people from the government came is not
remarkable.cheers
Juan
I apologize for having suggested something else.