Americans for the Arts and NEA Vs. The Washington Times, False Accusations?

The Clyde Fitch Report addresses today a nasty he-said-she-said between the Washington Times on the one side and the lobbyist group Americans for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts on the other.

Recently, the notorious right wing Washington Times accused the NEA (an independent government organization) of attempting to lobby arts institutions represented by the private lobbying group Americans for the Arts to support Obama's health care reform. According to the Times, a top NEA representative gathered officials from dozens of arts organizations under the Americans for the Arts banner on a conference call, urging them to get behind health care reform. The Time's proof? Within days after the call, 21 arts organizations submitted letters to congress urging them to support the President's plans. And this only four months after nearly two million had been granted to these organizations by the NEA including stimulus funds. The Times is crying government coercion.

The Times quoted NEA Communications Director Sergant as saying on the call: "This is just the beginning. This is the first telephone call of a brand-new conversation. We are just now learning how to really bring this community together to speak with the government, what that looks like legally."

Adding more fuel to the fire is the alleged temporary "removal" of a podcast meeting between NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman and Americans for the Arts President Robert Lynch that had been advertised and posted on the American for the Arts website.

Landesman and Lynch have retaliated to the accusations with aggression, calling the article "fiction." In an open letter written in response to the Washington Times editorial, Lynch asserts: "None of the 21 arts organizations, to my knowledge, were on the August 10 conference call, which was reported as for artists, arts marketers, and producers. So no opportunity to "pressure" there. Americans for the Arts did not even learn about the conference call until we read news reports about it in September. Additionally, artists, except for some writers, are not allowed to get direct grants from the NEA (even though they ought to be); but sorry, no pressure opportunity there either. And the health care statement by the 21 arts groups was begun and finished well before August 10."

They assert that they did not, in fact meet on the dates the Times claims to have been the "podcast meeting," tough confirms that they did podcast a meeting in August that was posted and never removed from the website (it is still there).

Lynch goes on to say "I am sure that Ms. Picket [writer of the Times article] will find new tidbits to weave into her fiction simply because thousands of arts advocates have been talking about health care and the arts for many years now. What should not be obscured is that more than two million artists and some 5.8 million workers in the $167 billion nonprofit arts economy deserve decent health care. The arts are part of the solution. At the risk of giving Ms. Picket more unknown information for her to uncover just read our 1998 Monograph on the Arts in Medicine or our 2004 Monograph on the Culture of Care about the arts in U.S. hospitals."

Is this just one more thread in the tangle that has become the right wing fringe and the Obama administration? Or merely shoddy journalism?

To access the full Clyde Finch Report, click here.

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