Lawmakers Defend ONDCP TV Spots February 7, 2005
News Summary
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) should not have labeled ersatz TV news segments produced by the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) illegal propaganda, two GOP lawmakers said last week.The Washington Post reported Feb. 3 that Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), chair of the House Committee on Government Reform, said it was the responsibility of TV stations, not ONDCP, to disclose to viewers that the segments -- part of the Bush administration's anti-drug media campaign -- were produced by a government agency. The GAO said the taxpayer-funded segments violated a federal ban on "covert propaganda."
Davis said the packaging on the segments identified them as coming from ONDCP, even if the videos themselves made no mention of the government affiliation. "I don't think there's any legal violation," Davis said. "I would not want to start muzzling government organizations on this because of the way that this stuff is handled by the media."
Davis and Rep, Mark Souder (R-Ind.) wrote a letter to GAO on Jan. 19 asking the agency to reconsider its ruling. The GAO is Congress' own investigative agency. "GAO's analysis in this case is fundamentally flawed because it is inconsistent with ONDCP's express authorization to conduct a media campaign ... and does not distinguish between deliberate concealment of the source by the government from the news media and subsequent concealment of the source from the public by the news media," the letter stated.
The GAO declined to comment on the letter.
Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif. ), the ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, said the position taken by Davis and Souder "is straight out of George Orwell."
"It's astonishing that members [of Congress] would defend using federal taxpayers to deceive the public," said Waxman. "Fabricating news reports is illegal and unethical."
COMMENTS ON THIS ARTICLE: