GET FORBES

Is the government out to get a reporter who exposed media collusion in
anti-drug policy?

A freelance reporter shines an unwanted spotlight on financial aspects of a
government propaganda campaign which reek of questionable practices and
media manipulation. In response, the government agency in charge faxes
letters to the editors of the publication that printed his story, and to at
least one columnist at another publication and potential market for the
freelancer, questioning his credibility, ethics and political positions.

A scenario from a dictatorship or from a communist country? No, it's
happening right here and now in the U.S.A. The President's Office of Drug
Control Policy (ONDCP, or the drug czar's office) is going after the
messenger who exposed its policy of paying media organizations to write or
air stories favorable to its political strategy

The story began when the online magazine Salon ran freelancer Dan Forbes'
expose of a deal between the drug czar's office and the TV networks on Jan.
13. Because President Clinton's billion-dollar anti-drug media campaign was
paying for spots that Reagan and Bush had gotten for free, the
administration needed a justification for essentially creating a jobs
program for media workers.

They came up with the idea that for every ad the government paid for, the
networks would have to air a similarly valued public-service announcement
for free. Or, and most insidiously, to avoid this onerous financial
requirement, the media could donate politically-correct "anti-drug"
programs "in kind."

The government, in essence, was paying the media to present its drug policy
position; and if the networks and magazines didn't go along, they'd have to
give up valuable ad space or time if they wanted government money.

"The media are not getting paid to air certain programs," said ONDCP press
secretary Bob Weiner, defending the campaign. "Congress mandated a match -
that we buy at regular prices but that we negotiate for matching donations
from the media.

If we did not do that, we would not be following the law. Forbes is
incredibly inaccurate. This is not a political issue - it's a save
thechildren issue."

The drug czar's office was clearly not happy to have Forbes air the details
of this arrangement, and for the story to be picked up and front-paged by
The New York Times and given major coverage by most news organizations.
They were so unhappy that just before Salon ran the most recent part of the
investigation, ONDCP assistant director for strategic planning, Robert
Housman, sent a letter to Salon's top editors claiming that Forbes was biased.

"It is clear that Dan Forbes ...is more than just a disinterested reporter
in search of a story," Housman wrote in the letter, faxed on stationery
with The Executive Office of the President and a prominent picture of the
White House at the top. "Mr. Forbes has been a regular contributor to the
Media Awareness Project's Website, an organization that essentially
advocates for the legalization of drugs," the letter went on to claim.

But anyone who looks at the Media Awareness Project's (MAP) 35,000-plus
online clipping collection can see that the majority of articles posted
there support the government's position. Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey is a
larger "contributor" than Forbes if you count the number of articles
written by him that are posted (McCaffrey: 28; Forbes: 7). MAP does not pay
anyone to contribute: it simply reprints or links to any drug-policy
related story it can find, with hopes of stimulating debate about alternate
drug policies. And, why should a reporter who supports legalization be any
more biased than one who supports the government anyway?

(Forbes, by the way, has not made his position public.)

Housman didn't stop at sending his letter to Forbes' bosses at Salon - he
also sent it Mark Jurkowitz, media columnist for The Boston Globe and
possibly to other media editors and potential markets for Forbes' work.
Neither Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post nor Alex Kuczynski of The New
York Times received the letter, however, but both were aware that Forbes
was under attack.

David Talbot, Salon's editor-in-chief, told Jurkowitz that "whatever biases
Dan Forbes has about U.S. drug policy... I think the biases were not the
driving factor in the stories he did for us... What's really going on here
is the White House is coming close to launching a preemptive strike on the
reputation of a journalist."

Housman further attacked Forbes on the Pacifica radio program Democracy Now
on April 4, saying that he was "sloppy," that his work was "half truth,
half made up," "littered with factual errors," and "willfully blind to the
facts." However, the only "mistakes" Housman could document were in a
headline (which wasn't written by Forbes) and in a quote (which was
accurate but which told a different story than another ONDCP source did).
ONDCP had no substantive arguments to back its accusations of bias, errors
or sloppiness.

"They've tried to divide me from my institutional support, which as a
freelancer, I don't have much of to begin with," said Forbes. "They've used
McCarthy-ite guilt by association of the worst sort. They've got this big
taxpayer funded machine and I've got my pen and notebook."

Forbes is not the only journalist to run afoul of ONDCP, either. Michael
Massing is author of "The Fix: Under Nixon, America Had An Effective Drug
Policy: We Should Restore It" and winner of the MacArthur 'genius' award
for his coverage of drug issues.

He told NewsWatch he was "berated," on the phone by Housman, a conversation
Massing called "unprofessional." Massing was also publicly "denounced" at a
criminology conference by ONDCP press secretary Bob Weiner, he says. "It
was during a session of the conference and I was in the audience. Weiner
said, 'We're looking for people who are helpful, not like Michael Massing."

Professor Thomas Patterson, Acting Director of the Shorenstein Center on
Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, says that in a
democracy, the government is within its rights to attack a journalist who
it believes is attacking its policies and practices. "In a free society,
they can make any claim they want and get it out into the open and see
where the facts come down. Probably, when you add up the costs and
benefits, whatever benefit they get by tarnishing this guy's reputation is
offset by the costs of looking stupid and heavy-handed."

He adds, "I do have problems with the (tactics used in the anti-drug media
campaign) but I have even larger problems with the media.

Think what they'd do if a Congressman took $200, 000 in order to vote a
particular way. How can they justify taking the money?"