daniel
01-16-2003, 05:42 AM
From Dan Forbes, journalist for Slate and others:
A free-lancer, I ended up - as much to my surprise as anyone's - testifying before both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, appearing on ABC, FOX, CNN, the BBC and NPR, and actually helping to curtail a covert, federal propaganda program.
This followed my disclosure in Salon that the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) provided hundreds of thousands of dollars of financial incentives per episode to the TV networks for government-vetted and even government-dictated anti-drug scripts. The networks' total haul was over $22 million. I quoted named consultants on the ONDCP payroll who promulgated specific changes in specific shows at the government's behest. Then came my perhaps more alarming disclosure that the same financial-credit-for-content paradigm was in place at some of the nation's most prominent nonfiction magazines as well.
Within a week, Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey declared that his office would no longer vet scripts in advance. The FCC ruled the networks must give notice of ONDCP involvement in shows, and eventually the White House agreed to no longer pay for television content.
The White House blustered in response to my work and attacked me personally. But it never indicated any errors. Most chilling of all was the revelation of the partisan motive underlying the whole media campaign: that it's sheer propaganda designed to influence the nation's electorate voting on state drug-reform ballot initiatives.
As disclosed 7/27/00 in Fighting "Cheech & Chong" Medicine, the campaign was engendered at a meeting convened by Gen. McCaffrey nine days after medical marijuana initiatives passed in Arizona and California in 1996. Attending were two White House officials, the then head of the DEA, representatives of the FBI, Justice, HHS, Treasury and Education, along with state law enforcement personnel. As records of the meeting I obtained indicate, they discussed the need for tax payer-funded propaganda to thwart potential medical marijuana initiatives in the other 48 states and perhaps even roll back the two that had passed.
My disclosures prompted more than 100 articles and broadcasts, including next-day, front-page coverage nationwide and editorials condemning the practice I outlined. I've been recognized with awards from a chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism/Online News Association and the Lindesmith Center. I pursued this investigation on spec, with no guarantee of payment or publication, for half-a-year and more.
Another half-year investigation, also pursued on spec, resulted in The Governor's Sub Rosa Plot to Subvert an Election in Ohio, published by the venerable Washington think tank, the Institute for Policy Studies. Find it at:
http://www.ips-dc.org/projects/drugpolicy/ohio.htm. It detailed how Ohio Governor Bob Taft and the highest reaches of his administration embarked on a concerted, months-long effort to subvert the state's electoral process and defeat a drug treatment rather than incarceration amendment that appeared on the ballot this November. I prove political malfeasance, the misuse of public funds and the inappropriate use of government resources in Ohio.
A recent national scoop disclosed the effort by the White House to use its anti-marijuana TV ads to defeat drug-reform state ballot initiatives. Find it at: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n1636/a06.html?126.
A free-lancer, I ended up - as much to my surprise as anyone's - testifying before both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, appearing on ABC, FOX, CNN, the BBC and NPR, and actually helping to curtail a covert, federal propaganda program.
This followed my disclosure in Salon that the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) provided hundreds of thousands of dollars of financial incentives per episode to the TV networks for government-vetted and even government-dictated anti-drug scripts. The networks' total haul was over $22 million. I quoted named consultants on the ONDCP payroll who promulgated specific changes in specific shows at the government's behest. Then came my perhaps more alarming disclosure that the same financial-credit-for-content paradigm was in place at some of the nation's most prominent nonfiction magazines as well.
Within a week, Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey declared that his office would no longer vet scripts in advance. The FCC ruled the networks must give notice of ONDCP involvement in shows, and eventually the White House agreed to no longer pay for television content.
The White House blustered in response to my work and attacked me personally. But it never indicated any errors. Most chilling of all was the revelation of the partisan motive underlying the whole media campaign: that it's sheer propaganda designed to influence the nation's electorate voting on state drug-reform ballot initiatives.
As disclosed 7/27/00 in Fighting "Cheech & Chong" Medicine, the campaign was engendered at a meeting convened by Gen. McCaffrey nine days after medical marijuana initiatives passed in Arizona and California in 1996. Attending were two White House officials, the then head of the DEA, representatives of the FBI, Justice, HHS, Treasury and Education, along with state law enforcement personnel. As records of the meeting I obtained indicate, they discussed the need for tax payer-funded propaganda to thwart potential medical marijuana initiatives in the other 48 states and perhaps even roll back the two that had passed.
My disclosures prompted more than 100 articles and broadcasts, including next-day, front-page coverage nationwide and editorials condemning the practice I outlined. I've been recognized with awards from a chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism/Online News Association and the Lindesmith Center. I pursued this investigation on spec, with no guarantee of payment or publication, for half-a-year and more.
Another half-year investigation, also pursued on spec, resulted in The Governor's Sub Rosa Plot to Subvert an Election in Ohio, published by the venerable Washington think tank, the Institute for Policy Studies. Find it at:
http://www.ips-dc.org/projects/drugpolicy/ohio.htm. It detailed how Ohio Governor Bob Taft and the highest reaches of his administration embarked on a concerted, months-long effort to subvert the state's electoral process and defeat a drug treatment rather than incarceration amendment that appeared on the ballot this November. I prove political malfeasance, the misuse of public funds and the inappropriate use of government resources in Ohio.
A recent national scoop disclosed the effort by the White House to use its anti-marijuana TV ads to defeat drug-reform state ballot initiatives. Find it at: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n1636/a06.html?126.