Friday, Sep 5, 2008
The Feb. 2, 2001, offering shows a lot of cool-looking anti-drug agents dangling on ropes from helicopters as they bust a big marijuana grow in the wilds of California. One agent makes a face and comments that the growers had (improbably) relieved themselves inside their shelter. A DEA agent speaks of the "bigger business" marijuana has become under the control of large international criminal organizations and says that if a new drug appeared tomorrow -- call it "purple" -- they'd make money off it. The segment notes that pot smokers now suffer from increased levels of THC, which is said to have malign effects on the brain, blood, reproductive and respiratory systems. The next day, the agents all go off to bust another 10,000-plant operation, in the "never-ending battle" against dangerous drugs.
In a story on heroin addiction that ran on the same date, an attractive young female ex-addict says she became addicted to heroin the first time she tried it. Then she amends that to say she was addicted the first couple of times, or within a week. She got beaten up and robbed while buying street heroin.
In a Feb. 22 report on Los Angeles narcotics police, an informant facing incarceration herself is shown being dropped off by police to make numerous, incriminating heroin buys from dealers, who are subsequently shown to be arrested. (What happens to the informant subsequently is not shown.) The effort is described as an "endless battle. It's not against people, but against heroin. And it won't go away until the demand does."
A segment that ran a couple of days later concerns a pathetic teenager with shaved head and eyebrows who ended up having two heart attacks from abusing cough syrup.
Despite the obvious good intentions of the anti-drug media campaign, some of the content it pays for may actually do more harm than good. On March 20, 2001, Channel One aired a wildly irresponsible report on inhalants, one that gave viewers -- some of whom are as young as 11 -- far too much information about how to abuse household products. There were several shots of the type of products involved, and then one or two shots of someone spraying the product on a towel, preparing to inhale it. (Hearing of this, Zeese of Common Sense for Drug Policy said it sounded like the glue-sniffing scare of the 1970s, when "the media attention actually created a self-fulfilling prophecy.")
There were also two segments on the dangers of ecstasy and its simulacra-- featuring warnings that the drug cooks your organs "from the inside out" -- and one on a student at a rehab school who, after two years of sobriety, might finally be ready to leave.
These approved news segments make up only part of the numerous -- and highly remunerative -- Channel One features that have been approved by the drug czar's office over the last three years. According to a report by ONDCP/Zenith Media (one of the drug czar's ad agencies at the time), during the 1998-99 school year Channel One received credits totaling $3,264,000 for what were described as "16 Substance Abuse Program Features (1.5 - 4 min)" that the company aired that school year. (It's unknown how many segments were rejected by Pechmann's counterpart at the time.) In addition, the report lists "6 - 20 min. Feature Videos" valued at $425,000. These videos were submitted to free up in excess of two 30-second spots to be sold to some other client. ONDCP/Zenith list the final valuation figure, however, at five-sixths of $425,000, or $354,167. (Apparently only five of these videos were completed.) The final "Proposed Match" item is "1 Town Hall Meeting," scheduled for February 1999, and also valued at $425,000, or about the worth of two 30-second ads. Like the 16 news segments, this item is listed as completed, delivering its full $425,000 value. The total matching value of the features and the town hall meeting was $4,043,167.
The town hall meeting appears to have been basically a press release for the ONDCP -- but a very lucrative one for Channel One to televise. The fall 1999 ONDCP media campaign newsletter gushes about the "enthusiastic, energy-charged group of youngsters" who met with Gen. McCaffrey on March 17, 1999, in Channel One's Los Angeles studio, an event "produced by Channel One as part of its pro bono commitment to the Campaign." The newsletter continues: "The following day, Channel One's 12-minute newscast [presumably actually 10, with two minutes of ads] was devoted exclusively to the town hall event, benefiting students across the nation."
Students nationwide, says the ONDCP newsletter, benefited from McCaffrey's insight into "the responsibility of sports and entertainment celebrities to serve as role models, drug use depictions in movies and television, marijuana and other 'gateway' drugs." (Not incidentally, prior to this newsletter's release, a March 1999 report commissioned by McCaffrey himself by the federally funded Institute of Medicine declared marijuana is not a "gateway" drug.)
Whether taxpayers got their $425,000 worth by underwriting a lengthy program showing Gen. McCaffrey communing with a handpicked group of enthusiastic youngsters is uncertain, but that isn't really the point. The point is that it was overwhelmingly in Channel One's financial interest to make these deals. To see why, one need only look at the huge ad buy the ONDCP made -- and the financial obligation under which that deal placed Channel One.
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