ANTI-DRUG OFFICE'S VIDEOS DEFENDED

Davis Says Ruling That Law Was Violated Is Wrong

In all of the hubbub over federal public relations contracts, at least
one agency has gotten a bad rap, says Rep. Thomas M. Davis III
(R-Va.), chairman of the House Committee on Government Reform.

Davis said yesterday that the Government Accountability Office was
wrong Jan. 4 when it ruled that the Office of National Drug Control
Policy broke federal law last year by preparing prepackaged news
stories that did not disclose to television viewers that the
government had produced them.

The video news releases, which featured narrators "reporting" on the
Bush administration's anti-drug campaign, constituted "covert
propaganda" and violated a ban against publi
city and propaganda, the
GAO found.

Davis disagreed, saying in an interview that if anyone had a duty to
disclose that the videos were government-produced, it was the news
organizations that put them on the air. Davis noted that the external
packaging clearly labeled the videos as government products.

"I don't think there's any legal violation," he said. "I would not
want to start muzzling government organizations on this because of the
way that this stuff is handled by the media."

Davis said Congress directed the drug-control office to engage in
media campaigns to help prevent and reduce drug abuse among young people.

In a Jan. 19 letter, Davis and Rep. Mark Edward Souder (R-Ind.) urged
the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, 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," the
lawmakers wrote (emphasis theirs).

Critics cite the videos -- and similar prepackaged news stories issued
by the Department of Health and Human Services last year to tout the
Medicare drug benefit -- as evidence that the Bush administration is
using tax dollars to promote its policies by surreptitious means.
Recent revelations that the Education Department produced a similar
video news release on the No Child Left Behind law and paid
conservative commentator Armstrong Williams to promote the law further
stoked the controversy.

Thomas A. Riley, spokesman for the anti-drug office, said it stopped
using the videos, which cost $155,000, in May after the GAO ruling on
the Medicare videos. Officials believe the videos are legal, he said,
"but if it's going to be controversial or going to be a distraction,
it's just not worth it for us."

Riley said the office's use of such videos began in 1998 during the
Clinton administration. He provided a copy of one from 1999. The
video, about an anti-drug Web site, includes suggested language for
anchors to read, as well as images and a sound bite from an America
Online official. Unlike some Bush-era videos, it does not have a
narrator resembling a reporter, and the material amounts to raw
footage rather than a story that could air with no changes.

Bush said last month that agencies should no longer hire commentators
or journalists to promote policies. Democrats have asked the GAO to
investigate agencies' public relations contracts.

Susan A. Poling, managing associate general counsel at the GAO,
declined to comment on the Davis letter, saying it is an open case.

Last month, when the GAO issued its letter on the drug-control
office's videos, Poling said: "What is objectionable about these is
the fact the viewer has no idea their tax dollars are being used to
write and produce this video segment."

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on Davis's
committee, said the GAO has the right standard -- and Davis and Souder
have the wrong one.

"Their position is straight out of George Orwell," Waxman said in a
statement. "It's astonishing that members [of Congress] would defend
using federal taxpayers to deceive the public. Fabricating news
reports is illegal and unethical."

Davis said that he has not evaluated the Medicare case, and that the
Williams contract was wrong. He said his House committee may take up
the issue of how government messages should be labeled.