Jan 14, 2005 By: Bob Curley Jointogether.org

Ersatz “news” videos produced by the federal Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) for broadcast by TV stations constituted “covert propaganda” and violated federal law, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has concluded.

The spots, aired in early 2004 on a number of TV stations, were staged as independently reported segments detailing ONDCP’s anti-drug media campaign. In reality, however, the “reporter” narrating the story was not a journalist but rather a paid contractor for ONDCP — although those facts were never disclosed to the viewing public. The segments included an “interview” with drug czar John Walters.

Responding to an investigation request from Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the GAO found that ONDCP spent in excess of $150,000 in Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign funds since 2001 to produce seven video segments touting its anti-marijuana ad campaign. (For a copy of the GAO report and other information on the Waxman request, see the website of the Minority Office of the House Committee on Government Reform.)The segments ended up being broadcast on about 300 television stations nationally, reaching approximately 22 million households.

GAO said the ONDCP’s role in producing the segments was clear to broadcasters who received the tapes. However, the agency rejected ONDCP’s contention that this disclosure shielded the agency from charges that it violated laws prohibiting federal money from being “used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by the Congress.”

“It is not enough to assert, as ONDCP does, that it adequately notified news media organizations of its role in creating [the video news segments],” the GAO said. “By their very nature, prepackaged news stories primarily target television-viewing audiences, not news broadcasters … and this is true of ONDCP’s prepackaged news stories. The proof of this is that … ONDCP designed and executed its story packages to be indistinguishable from news stories produced by private-sector television news organizations.”

The GAO also rejected ONDCP’s argument that Congress’ authorization for the agency to conduct “news media outreach” exempted the agency from the ban against covert propaganda.

Tom Riley, a spokesperson for ONDCP, told Join Together that lawyers for the agency disagreed with the GAO’s conclusions, which Riley said were “phrased in inflammatory language.” Riley stressed that ONDCP’s dissemination of prepackaged video clips to TV stations predated the Bush administration, and that the agency decided to discontinue producing the clips last May when the GAO concluded that the Department of Health and Human Services had violated federal law by producing similar news reports promoting the administration’s Medicare drug benefits plan.

Riley noted that the GAO report found nothing inaccurate in the video segments. Of the agency’s decision to stop distributing the videos for broadcast, he said, “It’s a shame, because I think this was a good way to get helpful public-health information out to TV viewers.”

Both Riley and journalists who cover federal addiction policy downplayed any long-term impact from the controversy. “I think our credibility is largely based on what our messages are and who is getting them,” said Riley, who said that the youth anti-drug campaign has been effective in raising perceptions of risk about drug use and lowering usage rates among teens.

Gary Enos, executive editor at Manisses Communications — publisher of Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Weekly, Addiction Professional, and Behavioral Healthcare Tomorrow — said, “I don’t see the latest developments as having a substantial impact on how we cover ONDCP or perceive it as a news source. Our outlook on the agency is shaped more by how it has disseminated information historically.

“Given that the administration has exercised substantial control over media access and how high-profile agencies such as ONDCP craft their message, that has a more far-reaching effect on how we analyze the news that comes out of ONDCP,” he added.

The ONDCP controversy boiled to the surface at about the same time as a related incident involving the U.S. Department of Education, which paid conservative columnist Amrmstrong Williams $240,000 to tout the administration’s No Child Left Behind act. As with the ONDCP news items, Williams failed to disclose to the public that his columns and TV segments supporting the educational plan were bought and paid for by viewers’ tax money. This week, Education Secretary Rod Paige called for an investigation into the payments to Williams.

Responding to reporters’ questions about the Armstrong Williams case this week, President Bush said, “There needs to be a clear distinction between journalism and advocacy. All of us, the Cabinet, needs to take a good look and make sure this kind of thing doesn’t happen again.”

http://www.jointogether.org/news/features/2005 /prepackaged-ondcp-news-called.html