New Hampshire station bans union's anti-privatization ad

A New Hampshire television station has pulled the plug on an American Federation of Government Employees advertisement lambasting the Bush administration for privatizing federal work.

WMUR, an ABC affiliate based in Manchester, N.H., decided not to air the AFGE ad because it is potentially defamatory, said Jeff Bartlett, the station's general manager. The ad, he said, insinuates that Halliburton Co., the Houston-based oil services firm formerly run by Vice President Dick Cheney, is guilty of fraud and cost overruns on an Iraq fuel delivery contract.

An internal Defense Department audit last week revealed that Halliburton may have overcharged the Pentagon for gasoline imported from Kuwait to Iraq by as much as $61 million. The allegations prompted an outcry from lawmakers, and some have called for an investigation. But no formal legal charges have been filed.

"For most of us, Christmas comes but once a year," the AFGE ad begins. "But for big corporations like Halliburton that get no-bid government contracts worth billions, Christmas comes almost every day." The ad, set to "Jingle Bells" and images from the 1941 film "Meet John Doe," protests the Bush administration's competitive sourcing initiative, under which contractors bid for work currently performed by federal employees.

The Office of Management and Budget has pushed competitive sourcing as a way to ensure efficient use of taxpayer dollars. Administration officials and industry lobbyists accuse AFGE of distributing misinformation about the initiative.

For instance, the initiative does not favor contractors, according to OMB. In-house teams of federal workers have a track record of winning at least half of public-private competitions.

But AFGE argues that the White House is using competitive sourcing as an excuse to privatize federal work and hand contracts to cronies.

"And [what happens] when contractors go over budget or commit fraud?" the union's ad asks. "It seems as long as they keep writing big contribution checks to the Bush campaign, they just keep getting more government contracts paid for by you and me."

The "One Christmas" ad is part of a larger AFGE publicity campaign "aimed at building awareness about the negative impact of contracting out federal services," said AFGE President John Gage. "We want the public to know what's really going on in government. Taxpayer money is just being squandered with no accountability to the American people."

AFGE is seeking to air "One Christmas," and a separate ad criticizing the Bush administration for contracting out veterans' services, on TV stations throughout New Hampshire and Iowa, two key presidential primary states. This way the union's message will reach the audiences most attuned to national politics, said Will Robinson, a media consultant helping with ad campaign.

The union has not yet endorsed a Democratic candidate in the primaries, but plans to make an announcement in January.

Robinson said he was "surprised and disappointed" at WMUR's refusal to air "One Christmas," which he characterized as "satire." All of the major network affiliates in Des Moines and Cedar Rapids, Iowa's two largest television markets, have agreed to show the advertisement, he said. An NBC affiliate in Boston, Mass., also agreed, he said. That station reaches New Hampshire viewers.

But WMUR, the largest commercial television station in New Hampshire, is important to the publicity campaign, Robinson said. The station, which reaches more than 1 million viewers, has agreed to air the AFGE advertisement on the contracting of veterans' services.

But Bartlett said that WMUR would not air "One Christmas" on the advice of its lawyers. In addition to the defamation issue, movie clips used in the ad could open the station to copyright violation charges, he said.