6 Magazines Given Anti-Drug Discounts

The White House drug policy office offered financial incentives to at least six magazines that ran stories discouraging drug use, an arrangement similar to one with television networks.

The drug office and the publications say there were never any attempts to influence the content of articles. Under the deal with the networks, which drew public attention earlier this year, programs that carried anti-drug messages could be exempted from requirements to run anti-drug ads.

Stephen G. Smith, editor of U.S. News & World Report, one of the six named in a report by the online magazine Salon, told Associated Press that people on the editorial side were “utterly ignorant of any kind of arrangement or even the hint of any kind of arrangement.”

He noted that an article in the January issue of the magazine questioned the propriety of television networks including anti-drug themes in entertainment shows in exchange for public service announcements.

Salon reported that the Sporting News, Family Circle, Seventeen, Parade and USA Weekend also made use of the arrangement that gave them financial credits worth thousands of dollars in ad space they owed the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

“We have been open about this from the beginning,” Bob Weiner, spokesman for White House drug policy director Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, said in an interview.

He said there was “no attempt and no action that dictates any content control whatsoever.” The magazines’ editorial sides were unaware of, and played no role in, negotiations between the office’s ad agency that bought ad space and their sales departments, he said.

Congress in 1997 approved a $1-billion program to buy anti-drug ads in the national media.

The agreements with the networks and magazines reduce their public service obligations when they carry anti-drug messages in their shows or articles.

U.S. News Publisher Bill Holiber said in an interview that dealings with the drug office occurred before he started his job in January. He said the magazine no longer gets ads from the office because it is against the magazine’s policy to link editorial content to financial incentives.

Holiber said U.S. News never submitted articles for review, but the ad agency representing the drug office looked at articles on its own to see if they met the criteria for exemptions. He said articles in the publication never qualified.

Revelations that the drug office reviewed such television shows as “ER” and “The Practice” raised concerns of government interference in editorial independence. In January, the White House announced new guidelines making clear that it would not review program episodes for ad credits until after they have been aired.