On Jan. 4, the U.S. Government Accountability Office opined that taxpayer-funded video news releases produced and distributed by the White House Office of the National Drug Control Policy violated the government ban of “covert propaganda.” At issue are a series of VNRs produced over the last three years that contain “prepackaged news stories” ready for airing on broadcast television news programs – theoretically, to save news stations money on reporting, but not identifying the ONDCP as the source of the “report.” In June, Los Angeles Democratic U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, ranking minority member of the House Committee on Government Reform, asked the GAO to look into the ONDCP actions, to determine if they were illegal. ONDCP General Counsel Edward H. Jurith defended the Astroturf stories, explaining that they’re “produced in the same manner as if produced by a television news organization,” he wrote in a Sept. 3 letter to GAO Managing Associate General Counsel Susan A. Poling. “Many television news organizations are willing to use [prepackaged stories] since they help broadcasters reduce the cost of gathering and producing news,” and the ONDCP clearly labeled the VNRs as coming from the drug policy office, thereby avoiding any propaganda violations. Moreover, Jurith wrote, the drug office produced the videos pursuant to the Drug-Free Media Campaign Act of 1998 enacted by Congress for the purpose of allowing the ONDCP to “influence the attitudes and behaviors of our target audience, and Congress authorizes us to use various media to effect those changes.”
The GAO disagrees. Each of the VNR “news” stories is narrated by an unseen announcer, who explains that “he or she is ‘reporting’ on press conferences and other activities of ONDCP and other government officials regarding ONDCP’s anti-drug campaign,” reads the report. “Each story is accompanied by proposed ‘lead-in’ and ‘closing’ remarks to be spoken by television station news anchors” – but does not suggest inclusion of the caveat that the story was “reported” by a hired narrator who is reading drug-office spin. And therein lies the rub.
The ONDCP spent nearly $155,000 in taxpayer funds for five VNRs containing prepackaged news, which were eventually broadcast on 300 television stations over a total of 56 days, the GAO report noted. “By its own records, ONDCP’s prepackaged news stories reached 22 million households, without disclosing to any of those viewers – the real audience – that the products they were watching, which ‘reported’ on activities of a government agency, were actually prepared by that government agency, not by a seemingly independent third party,” reads the GAO report. “This is the essence of the ‘covert propaganda’ violation.” By extension, the drug czar’s office also violated the Antideficiency Act, because the propaganda videos were produced with taxpayer money without an earmarked appropriation to do so, a violation that the GAO says must be reported to Congress and the president.
This article appears in January 21 • 2005.