The fearsome NewsChannel5 has McNeely Pigott & Fox squarely in its sights. First, investigative reporter Ben Hall attacked MP&F for gouging the city for a half-million dollars for flacking for the new convention center. That was a nice scoop, although it was a little strange that Hall was the reporter. He was the press secretary for Bob Clement in the mayoral campaign won by Karl Dean with help from MP&F, which has hated Clement dating back to the time he beat Phil Bredesen for Congress. Anyway, now Phil Williams is nipping at MP&F's heels over its contract with the airport. "Dean-Tied PR Firm Snagged Another Metro Contract" says the headline on the TV station's website. In its proposal, the firm noted that partner Mike Pigott had been a senior "adviser to the successful Karl Dean for Mayor campaign." Gasp! Teabagger Ben Cunningham doesn't like it, and he appears in Williams' report to express outrage. (For the record, we're a little tired of Cunningham popping up in every story relating to possible government waste. He's a kook, and we all know it. Let him go his own way.) At the end, Williams finally notes: "To be clear, there's no evidence that Dean or anyone else exerted any pressure to make this contract happen — or that Dean knew about the contract." OK then, so what we have here is this astonishing revelation: A PR firm has snuggled up to a winning political candidate, and then that firm has peddled all this influence that it actually may or may not have, winning various contracts to do not much of anything for a lot of money. Next, Channel 5 will tell us there are whores on Dickerson Pike.
