Pubdate: Mon, 21 Feb 2005
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 2005 The Washington Post Company
Contact:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/491
Author: Christopher Lee, Washington Post Staff Writer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/campaign.htm (ONDCP Media Campaign)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Mark+Souder
Cited: Office of National Drug Control Policy ( www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov )

PREPACKAGED NEWS GETS GAO REBUKE

Walker: PR Must Be Clearly Labeled

The Government Accountability Office warned federal departments last week 
against using a popular public relations tool that already has landed two 
agencies in hot water for breaking federal anti-propaganda laws.

In a Feb. 17 memo, Comptroller General David M. Walker reminded department 
and agency heads that prepackaged news stories that do not identify the 
government as their source violate provisions in annual appropriations laws 
that ban covert propaganda.

"It is not enough that the contents of an agency's communication may be 
unobjectionable," Walker wrote. "Neither is it enough for an agency to 
identify itself to the broadcasting organization as the source of the 
prepackaged news story."

Prepackaged news stories, sometimes known as video news releases, have 
become an increasingly common public relations tool among government 
agencies and in industry. They are designed to resemble broadcast news 
stories, complete with narrators who can be easily mistaken for reporters 
and suggested introductory language for TV anchors to read. Some news 
organizations have run them without changes and without identifying them as 
government-produced.

Within the last year, the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, has 
rapped the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Department of 
Health and Human Services for distributing prepackaged news stories that do 
not disclose within the story that the government is the source of the 
material.

"[T]elevision-viewing audiences did not know that stories they watched on 
television news programs about the government were, in fact, prepared by 
the government," Walker wrote. "We concluded that those prepackaged news 
stories violated the publicity or propaganda prohibition."

Walker noted that agencies may legally distribute prepackaged stories "so 
long as there is clear disclosure to the television viewing audience" that 
the material was prepared by the government or its contractors.

"Agency officials should scrutinize any proposed prepackaged news stories 
to ensure appropriate disclosures," he wrote, adding that GAO officials 
were available to answer questions in particular cases.

Last month, Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), chairman of the House 
Committee on Government Reform, said the GAO was wrong in ruling against 
the drug control office because the agency's mission is to produce media 
campaigns to prevent and reduce drug abuse. Davis and Rep. Mark Edward 
Souder (R-Ind.) sent Walker a letter urging him to withdraw the ruling and 
reconsider the law. They wrote that it was the news organizations, not the 
agency, that had a duty to disclose the source of the video news release.

Walker declined to overturn the ruling in a Feb. 15 letter. He wrote that 
the drug control office was bound by the disclosure requirement and that 
appropriations laws govern the behavior of federal agencies, not of 
independent news organizations.
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MAP posted-by: Beth