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• Tuesday, December 2, 2008 10:20 AM

  Jeff Bercovici at Condé Nast Portfolio

  http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/mixed-media/2008/12/02/why-nbc-news-shouldve-known-better

  by Jeff Bercovici
  Why NBC News Should've Known Better
  Dec 2 2008 10:42AM EST

  [...] In January 2000, Salon ***

  http://salon.com/news/feature/2000/01/13/drugs
  "Prime-time propaganda" By Daniel Forbes, Jan. 13, 2000

  *** broke the news that the Office of National Drug Control Policy, under McCaffrey's leadership, was quietly paying television networks to weave explicit anti-drug messages into some of their most popular shows. (It was a little more complicated than that -- rather than giving the networks cash, ONDCP was giving them back airtime it had already purchased at a discount, allowing them to resell it at a higher rate. But that was the gist.)

  After a period of defending/minimizing its actions, ONDCP dropped the controversial program a year later. ***

  http://salon.com/news/feature/2001/06/30/ondcp
  "The quiet death of prime-time propaganda" By Daniel Forbes, June 30, 2001

  *** [...] McCaffrey [...] possesses a high-handed certainty in the pureness of his own motives and an arrogant willingness to decide for himself what the rest of the world does and doesn't need to know. His actions as drug czar show that he's comfortable shaping a single message to suit multiple agendas without disclosing that fact to the message's recipients. [...]

  - - Jeff Bercovici at Condé Nast Portfolio

  —sysprog Read sysprog's other letters
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