>From: "Peter McWilliams" <peter@mcwilliams.com>
>Subject: 1-20-2000
>Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2000 19:44:24 -0800
>X-Mozilla-Status: 8001
>X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000
>
>1-20-2000
>
>An important date. For the first time in its long and horrific history, 
the
>War on Drugs blinked. In the past, it would have taken the path of further
>escalation. "Of course we'll use money to keep messages of drugs away from
>our children!" Hell. that would have gotten a second $1 billion from the
>Congress and pledges of fidelity to (non)party line from the networks.
>
>But I think we're seeing in the Drug War the inner shudder of a beauracrisy
>in its death throes.
>
>Or not.
>
>Enjoy,
>
>Peter
>
>January 20, 2000
>
>
>
>January 20, 2000
>
>
>Drug Office Will End Scrutiny of TV Scripts
>
>
>By DON VAN NATTA Jr.
>ASHINGTON, Jan. 19 -- The White House has announced that it will stop
>scrutinizing scripts of television shows under a widely criticized financial
>agreement with the networks that had encouraged them to include antidrug
>messages in the plots of programs.
>
>As part of the two-year-old arrangement, White House drug policy officials
>reviewed more than 100 episodes of shows like "E.R." and "Beverly Hills
>90210" before they appeared.
>
>White House drug policy officials announced that they would continue to
>reward networks for showing programs with strong antidrug themes, but they
>said they would not review the programs' content until they had been shown.
>
>The office changed its guidelines after the practice was described last week
>in a report in Salon, an Internet magazine. Some critics said the practice
>by the networks amounted to self-censorship in exchange for a fee. Andrew
>Jay Schwartzman, president of the Media Access Project, a public-interest
>law firm, called the arrangement "an outrageous abandonment of the First
>Amendment."
>
>The White House press secretary, Joe Lockhart, said the White House Office
>of National Drug Control Policy had decided to adopt "new guidelines" that
>eliminated the practice of advance screening because it would place "the
>program on a track where it will get universal support."
>
>"They've revised their policy to no longer look at scripts or do changes in
>programming for credit before a program is finished," Mr. Lockhart said.
>
>Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, director of the drug policy office, said the
>changes were made "to eliminate any misunderstandings and prevent any
>inference of federal intrusion in the creative process," The Associated
>Press reported today. "We have forged a strong partnership with the
>entertainment and media community and look forward to continuing to
>strengthen those times."
>
>Although the arrangement, which involved all the major networks, was not
>widely known, it was revealed by General McCaffrey at a Congressional
>hearing last October.
>
>The arrangement began in 1997 shortly after Congress approved an ambitious
>antidrug advertising campaign that required media outlets to match any
>advertising time bought by the federal government with public service time.
>Essentially, it had given the drug office and other government agencies the
>ability to buy television commercials at half price.
>
>But since 1997, the demand for television advertising time has sharply
>increased. With the networks seeking ways to sell more time at full price,
>they struck a compromise with the government to reduce the amount of
>advertising time they were required to provide by broadcasting antidrug
>shows. That allowed the networks to sell the air time that would have gone
>to the government for half price to regular advertisers for full price.
>
>The networks have strongly defended their role in the practice, saying they
>never relinquished creative control of any programs to the government. But
>several network and television studio executives had conceded that they did
>search for episodes with story lines that they assumed might satisfy
>officials in the White House drug policy office.
>
>A new and smaller network, WB, had said that it had submitted scripts in
>progress from "Smart Guy" and "The Wayans Brothers." Both shows had episodes
>with the theme of drug use, and producers for both shows altered their
>scripts at the suggestion of government reviewers.
>
>When first confronted with the publicity last week, drug policy officials
>defended the arrangement, saying it was an effective way to spread antidrug
>messages to young people without infringing on the creativity of producers.
>
>Representative Billy Tauzin, the Louisiana Republican who is chairman of the
>House Commerce Committee's telecommunications subcommittee, announced that
>he would hold hearings on the matter, and he is still planning to do so this
>spring despite the White House's change of guidelines.
>
>