"My initial response when I heard about this story is: 'What? Are these
people on drugs?'" - Robert Thompson, director of Syracuse University's
Center for the Study of Popular Television

It's a classic example of how media integrity has become hostage to the
bottom line: Major TV networks must submit scripts to the White House
Anti-Drug Office for approval when the content deals with illegal
substances.

This represents a shameful reversion to an era in American broadcasting from
the '30s through the '60s when scripts of shows about the FBI, such as
network radio's "Gangbusters" and the '60s TV series "The FBI," were
personally reviewed and vetted by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.

To air anything that Hoover judged as casting aspersions on the bureau
risked bringing down the director's wrath and accusations that the network
carrying the series-as well as the creative personnel associated with
it-were pro-Communist. Offending Hoover could also result in leaks of the
damaging personal information that everyone in show business knew was
contained in the prodigious files the bureau maintained.

But whereas the craven willingness of the networks to submit their scripts
for Hoover's approval was grounded in a well-founded fear of his absolute
power, the 1997 agreement for networks to cede to the White House Drug
office secret sign-off on content was motivated by pure greed.

When Congress authorized The White House Office of National Drug Control
Policy to purchase $1 billion of time over five years for the airing of
anti-drug spots, it stipulated that the networks would have to match every
paid spot with a free-that is, public service-anti-drug message.

But each free spot precluded the sale of that time for a paid advertisement,
and losses could be considerable. When the networks balked, an agreement was
reached with the White House that messages within dramatic shows that the
drug czar's office certified as correctly and sufficiently anti-drug, would
be credited toward the free-time requirement.

Any chilling First Amendment considerations aside, the arrangement appears,
on its face, to be a violation of the anti-payola laws that require
broadcasters to identify all sources of monetary or other compensation.

The number of scripts submitted for waiver total more than 100. These
included not only series favored by younger viewers such as "90210" and
"Sabrina," but adult-oriented fare including "ER," "Sportsnight," "Home
Improvement, "The Practice" and "Providence." (ABC has belatedly claimed it
withdrew from the arrangement last year because of discomfort over script
submissions.)

Last week's White House announcement that scripts will no longer be approved
in advance is meaningless. Shows will be reviewed after completion because
content guidelines to qualify for a waiver remain in place.

Revelation of this secret arrangement by the online magazine Salon was met
with a series of patently misleading responses from the networks and the
White House press office. When President Clinton responded to a press
conference query as to whether it constituted censorship, he insisted that
if it did, then "Of course I wouldn't support that." (He immediately went on
to add, "And I never had sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.")

The tortured efforts by the networks and the White House to deny censorship
ignores the bottom line: If the script content was deemed insufficiently or
incorrectly anti-drug, the network airing the show would suffer the
punishment of a free-time waiver denial. (If a financial penalty for saying
wrong or incorrect things isn't censorship, then what is?)

Now, it turns out, newspapers such as The New York Times and the Washington
Post, which editorially condemned the arrangement, have entered into similar
deals. They published White House-approved children's anti-drug brochures
under their logos in return for waivers of the free-space ads they, like the
broadcasters, were expected to provide when they ran paid anti-drug
messages.

There is already case law-growing out of the FCC's attempt to impose a
"Family Hour" back in the '70s-that says any attempt by government to
threaten punishment of broadcasters if proposed content limitations are not
observed, is unconstitutional.

Freelance writer Daniel Forbes, who authored the Salon scoop that revealed
the White House/network arrangement, followed it up with a story about how,
when outside paid consultants hired by the drug czar's office ruled that an
anti-alcohol message in the original script for an episode last spring of
the WB's "Smart Guy" was judged not explicit enough receive a waiver, the
outside paid consultants who exercised sign-off authority came up with
"suggestions" that would have the characters following plot lines favored by
the drug czar.

The result, Forbes wrote, was that "by the time everyone was done with
shaping the script, it had changed significantly."

The common theme throughout both the White House and the networks' defense
of script submissions is that they result in good messages. Drug Czar Gen.
Barry McCaffrey has gone so far as to insist that the scripts his agency
approved are a major reason for the recent drops in drug usage.

Every totalitarian regime has justified the government's right to determine
which messages are and aren't "correct" by saying that the approved messages
"work." (But just how effective will any anti-drug messages on TV be now
that kids know they're subject to approval by the narcs?)

The WB's spineless vice-president for programming, John Litvak, has gone so
far in his groveling to assert that if a government-paid, outside consultant
"knows more than we do," then government script approval is to be welcomed.

Seig Heil To Our Glorious Leader, The Drug Czar, and His All-Knowing, Paid
Consultants!