Scrushy grows grass roots with the green
You can buy a paper for fifty cents… but buying the content will cost you a whole lot more.
It appears now that part of Richard Scrushy’s PR campaign has surfaced. While his unspoken strategy was well-documented and transparent, what wasn’t so well-known was the people on the payroll:
Audry Lewis, the author of those stories in The Birmingham Times, the city’s oldest black-owned paper, now says she was secretly working on behalf of Scrushy, who she says paid her $11,000 through a public relations firm and typically read her articles before publication.
Documents obtained by The Associated Press show The Lewis Group wrote a $5,000 check to Audry Lewis on April 29, 2005 — the day Scrushy hired the company. The head of the company, Times founder Jesse J. Lewis Sr., is not related to Audry Lewis.
The firm wrote another $5,000 check that day to the Rev. Herman Henderson, who employs Audry Lewis at his Believers Temple Church and was among the black preachers supporting Scrushy who were present in the courtroom throughout.
Audry Lewis and Henderson now say Scrushy owes them $150,000 for the newspaper stories and other public relations work, including getting black pastors to attend the trial in a bid to sway the mostly black jury.
Scrushy is denying personal knowledge, and the prosecutors say this doesn’t warrant action. After all, while it may be unethical, it isn’t illegal — and they are satisfied that the jury wasn’t swayed by news coverage anyway. Reporter Jay Reeves described Scrushy’s reaction to the news about the news about the news:
In an e-mail response to questions from the AP, Scrushy denied authorizing payments to Henderson or Audry Lewis for any work on his behalf.
Scrushy said he “hit the ceiling” when he learned that the PR firm had paid Henderson but added that he had considered Audry Lewis to be “a nice Christian woman that thought we had been treated badly and she wanted to help.”
Now he said he knows they are both “about the bucks.”
Thoughts, people?
3 Responses
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Undisclosed Paid Endorsements
Yesterday, the Public Relations Society of America Advocacy Committee issued an statement about paid media endorsements, such as the one purported to have been made to Audrey Lewis (a freelance writer whose articles appeared in The Birmingham Times) by…
Trackback by Communication Overtones — January 25, 2006 @ 10:48 am
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[...] PR blogger Ike Pigott draws our attention today to the outrage over Richard Scrushy’s alleged payola to a reporter from the Birmingham Times, the city’s oldest Black-owned newspaper. “He didn’t think he was getting a fair shake in the media, which is why he hired me,” the writer said in an interview. [...]
Pingback by Play for Pay OK at The Flack — May 30, 2006 @ 9:43 am
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Ike,
Good find, Ike. while it’s not as threatening to the profession as, well, the White House payola scandal, you are on your game to bring it to the attention of anyone hoping to elevate the pratice of PR.
Comment by Peter Himler — January 19, 2006 @ 3:24 pm