LEAVE THE WASTELAND BE

It is one thing for popular TV characters to swig Sprite, drive Volvos, wear
Adidas and cheerfully tap away on iMacs. The public has learned to endure
product placement as an expected corporate vice.

It is quite another to peek into the director's chair and see Uncle Sam
mouthing lines.

The television industry has acknowledged a two-year-old financial deal with
the federal government that rewards networks for inserting anti-drug plots
and lines into television shows. ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and the WB admitted
sending advance scripts of popular shows to President Clinton's drug-policy
advisers for approval or possible revision.

It's a great deal for the industry: Networks can skirt their contractual
promise to run public-service announcements about drugs by simply adding
anti-drug content to shows like "General Hospital" or "ER." Specific types
of content are rewarded under a complicated rating system. For example, one
simple soap-opera overdose would reap four lucrative 30-second commercial
spots to sell.

The threat, of course, is not to the credibility of the nation's fictional
characters. It's the sneaky way the government has chosen to covertly
influence the public. And it's the blatant manner of exploiting the
television industry's greatest weakness - a desire for profits - to advance
a subliminal social agenda.

Subliminal persuasion works, no doubt about it. It worked a generation ago
when advertisers inserted near-invisible pictures of popcorn and soda
between frames of movie reels. It works now, when corporations and the
government blur the spaces between entertainment and information, fact and
fiction.

It works, but it infuriates people when they discover the manipulation, and
it turns credibility - like everything else - into a disposable commodity.