A minor scandal rattled the Bush administration last year when government agencies were caught buying favorable news coverage. At the time, the Bush administration’s response was murky.

Now, after the Government Accountability Office declared that many of these government expenditures were illegal, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings promptly issued a forthright statement. She called the past efforts “stupid, wrong and ill-advised” and said she had taken steps “to ensure that these types of missteps don’t

happen again.” They shouldn’t.

Armstrong Williams, a conservative commentator, had been touting the No Child Left Behind education reform law in newspaper columns and television shows. Favorable television stories about administration health initiatives carried sign-offs like “In Washington, I’m Karen Ryan reporting.” In Spanish it was “Alberto Garcia.” And a syndicated columnist, Maggie Gallagher, repeatedly praised President Bush’s Healthy Marriage initiative.

It turned out that all these favorable – and sometimes fawning – news stories and commentaries, ostensibly legitimate and independent, had been written and paid for by government agencies or by hired public relations firms.

President Bush said at a news conference last January: “We will not be paying commentators to advance our agenda. Our agenda ought to be able

to stand on its own two feet.” But his Education Department defended the payments to Mr. Williams, describing his commentaries as “no more than the legitimate dissemination of information to the public.”

In March, the Justice Department, echoed by the Education Department, said that there was no need to acknowledge the government’s role in producing television segments as long as they were factual.

The GAO had been investigating the matter for years and its auditors found that the government departments had violated a law banning the use of appropriated funds for “covert propaganda, purely partisan activities, or self-aggrandizing activities.”

The sweeping findings apply not only to the “reporting” video packages and the Williams commentaries but also to an Education Department analysis of news articles to see whether they showed that the Bush administration was “committed to education.” The auditors said: “Engaging in a purely political activity such as this is not a proper use of appropriated funds.”

Their main point was that the public was being deceived, since the government’s role was concealed.

In one exception, the auditors decided in favor of the Department of Health and Human Services’ $20,000 contract with Maggie Gallagher to serve as an expert consultant on marriage-related issues. They said that her services “were not covert, self-aggrandizing

or purely partisan.”

It shouldn’t have taken the GAO to remind federal agencies of the difference between facts and propaganda.