DANIEL SCHORR: The Bush administration tends to treat performance problems as public relations problems.</s>MELISSA BLOCK, host: NPR senior news analyst, Daniel Schorr.</s>DANIEL SCHORR: So when the Department of Education came under fire for its operation of the No Child Left Behind program, it paid a conservative commentator, Armstrong Williams, $24,000 to say nice things about the program. And more recently when the Food and Drug Administration drew criticism for lagging performance on salmonella poisoning and other inspection failures, its response was to offer a $330,000 contract to a public relations firm to improve its image.</s>DANIEL SCHORR: But not just any public relations firm. There was one, Qorvis Communications, which had friends in the agency. The trouble was that the law requires competitive bidding. But The Washington Post revealed that the FDA people found an ingenious way around that. The law permits the awarding of non-competitive contracts as an exception for Alaskan native enterprises. And so the contract was awarded to a group called Alaska Newspapers, Inc. or ANI.</s>DANIEL SCHORR: The idea was for ANI to hand over the work to Qorvis Communications. That was made explicit in correspondence unearthed by The Post. One email last October said that ANI would gladly serve as prime contractor for the FDA deal with Qorvis acting as subcontractor.</s>DANIEL SCHORR: So now the FDA is in trouble with Congress, again. John Dingell is the chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce which has jurisdiction over the FDA. And he says the agency chose to use its limited resources to save face instead of saving the public health. This sham of a contract calls into question the integrity of federal contracts awarded to small businesses and Alaska native corporations. Well, I can't wait for the next new revelation in Bush administration ventures in image polishing. This is Daniel Schorr.
Under the Bush administration, federal agencies like the Food and Drug Administration are encouraged to treat performance problems like public relations problems. The FDA's response to criticism over its handling of the salmonella outbreak and other inspection failures was to offer a $300,000 contract to Qorvis Communications.