Reading, Writing and Propaganda

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Channel One, which beams TV news programs and commercials into thousands of schools in the U.S., has broadcast dozens of news segments which contained anti-drug messages in the past three years -- and received millions of dollars' worth of ad credits from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy for doing so. The arrangement, in which taxpayers' money was used to underwrite a covert anti-drug message shown to millions of schoolchildren in the guise of news, appeared to violate the ONDCP's publicly-stated policy that news and editorial pieces would not be eligible for the ad credit program.