Pubdate: Wed, 12 Jul 2000
Source: Las Vegas Review-Journal (NV)
Copyright: Las Vegas Review-Journal, 2000
Contact:  P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125
Fax: (702)383-4676
Website: http://www.lvrj.com/
Forum: http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/feedback/

THE PARTY LINE

Drug Czar Aims To Infiltrate Hollywood.

It turns out drug czar and retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey wasn't
content with paying off TV networks to slip "anti-drug" messages into
the scripts of 109 (and still counting) episodes of entertainment
programs like "E.R." and "Beverly Hills, 90210" -- even going so far
as to preview the episodes and "suggest changes."

No, after that Orwellian scheme was exposed by the online magazine
Salon, back in January, came the April revelation that at least six
major magazines and newspapers had also met the drug czar's "matching
requirements" under 1997 legislation that requires media outlets to
"match" every dollar spent by the government to purchase anti-drug
ads.

The networks were loath to give up valuable commercial time for the
stipulated free "public service announcement or similar anti-drug
message." So Gen. McCaffrey's office allowed the networks -- and the
magazines and newspapers -- to meet the requirement by merely running
articles or entertainment programs which slipped "accurate depictions
of drug use issues" into their supposedly nonadvertising content, with
readers or viewers none the wiser.

Need we ask who got to define "accurate"?

But now comes a further revelation, in Tuesday's Los Angeles Times,
that the drug czar planned to disclose in congressional testimony this
week a plan to also "leverage popular movies" into featuring these
approved anti-drug messages.

Why, even the theater owners themselves may now be able to belly up to
the federal trough -- just as though they'd run a 60-second
"anti-drug" spot before a movie -- merely by running previews for
films which have the won the drug czar's "seal of approval."

It's an open secret that producers already approach commercial
sponsors to subsidize film production costs by eliciting payments for
"product placement" -- it's unlikely to be just a coincidence when
Nicholas Cage takes a swig of Pepsi these days, or Demi Moore lights
up a Marlboro.

But is this truly to be an open market?

Of course not. When Big Brother starts infiltrating our media to bribe
the procurers into delivering propaganda messages, it's a one-way
street. No other messengers need apply, and before you know it the
notion that our "free press" will deliver us a healthy public debate
featuring a diversity of viewpoints will evoke nothing but the kind of
cynical chuckles once heard in the Soviet Union.

Producers and publishers who sell out our heritage of a free and
skeptical press for such paltry payoffs should be exposed. Then, the
same Congress which was once wise enough to forbid the Voice of
America from broadcasting government propaganda (no matter how
seemingly well-intentioned) inside America should similarly put this
drug czar out of the domestic propaganda business.

Either that, or we can stop struggling to help our kids understand
those dusty old, hard-to-read documents by guys like Jefferson and
Madison in eighth grade Civics class. Instead, we'll just hand out
copies of Orwell's "1984."
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