SOUDER SAYS DRUG CZAR'S FAKE NEWS DIDN'T BREAK FEDERAL LAW

WASHINGTON - The drug czar's office didn't break a federal law with its
packaged anti-drug news stories that were narrated by fake journalists,
Rep. Mark Souder, R-3rd, said Friday. But the video news releases sent to
hundreds of TV stations in the past three years should have made clear that
they were produced at taxpayer expense, he said.

Souder, who chairs a subcommittee that oversees national anti-drug
programs, said the General Accountability Office was wrong when it ruled
that the Office of National Drug Control Policy violated the law by sending
the pre-packaged news stories to TV stations without disclosing to viewers
that the government had produced them.

The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, said the anti-drug video news
releases were "covert propaganda" and violated a ban against publicity and
propaganda.

The video releases "are complete, audio-video presentations that ONDCP
designed for broadcast by television news organizations as news reports,
without the need for any production effort by the news organization," the
GAO said.

In its report, the GAO quoted the drug policy office's top lawyer as saying
that the video clips "are produced in the same manner as if produced by a
television news organization. Many television news organizations are
willing to use (prepackaged news stories) since they help broadcasters
reduce the cost of gathering and producing news."

The Bush administration has gotten a black eye lately because of payments
it made to journalists and commentators to promote various social programs.
The journalists wrote commentaries in support of the programs without
disclosing that they were on the government payroll.

Souder said the video news releases are a different matter, however,
because the TV stations were told that the government wrote, produced and
distributed the material. In the case of journalists who accepted
government money and then wrote about government programs in glowing terms,
the relationship was not disclosed, he said.

One of the video news releases issued by the Office of National Drug
Control Policy, for instance, was about teen driving and marijuana use. Its
narrator identified himself as "this is Mike Morris reporting." The GAO
reviewed five other video news releases and said that although they were
mailed to TV stations clearly marked as coming from the drug czar's office,
the news clips themselves did not tell viewers who produced the reports.

Souder said TV stations that aired them could have disclosed the origin of
the segments but chose not to.

The drug czar is under orders from Congress to develop media campaigns to
help prevent and reduce drug abuse among young people. Among them is a
series of commercials with the theme "parents, the anti-drug."

In a letter, Souder and Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., chairman of the committee,
asked the GAO to withdraw its ruling and reconsider the law: "GAO's
analysis in this case is fundamentally flawed because it is inconsistent
with ONDCP's express authorization to conduct a media campaign ... and does
not distinguish between deliberate concealment of the source by the
government from the news media and subsequent concealment of the source
from the public by the news media."

They said TV stations' use of the video clips might violate journalistic
standards, but it's not illegal for the drug czar to make and distribute them.

The drug policy office sent the clips to 770 stations; 300 used the
reports, which were seen by 22 million households, the agency said.

Jennifer deVallance, press secretary for the drug czar's office, said the
video news releases date back to the Clinton years. She said the office
stopped issuing them in May when the GAO raised concerns about another
federal agency's similar releases. "We didn't want any distraction" from
the anti-drug campaign, she said. "It just wasn't worth it."

The six video clips produced in 2002, 2003 and 2004 cost $154,398, a
fraction of the agency's $154 million annual budget for an anti-drug media
campaign.

In their letter, Souder and Davis said if TV stations didn't want to use
the clips, they didn't have to, and that they could have identified the
material as coming from the federal government.

The drug control policy office "does not control the ultimate content of a
television news broadcast. The news organizations do," the two lawmakers
wrote. "The GAO opinion suggests that media outlets are passive conduits
for any information anyone submits to them. Those of us in Congress who
work with the media to ensure the public understands the work of the
Congress know otherwise."