cannabisnews.com: DrugSense Weekly, August 4, 2000 # 160





DrugSense Weekly, August 4, 2000 # 160
Posted by FoM on August 04, 2000 at 12:54:50 PT
DrugSense/MAP Replies to ONDCP Accusations 
Source: DrugSense
Dear Fairness and Accuracy in reporting (FAIR):One of our members forwarded the Action Alert below to me. I am the Executive Director of the Media Awareness Project (MAP) d/b/a DrugSense which Barry McCaffrey director of the ONDCP, alludes to below. We are a nonprofit educational corporation dedicated to disseminating honest accurate and scientifically valid information on drug policy related matters.
I wish to make you aware that McCaffrey and the ONDCP is being deliberately disingenuous in its defensive attack on Daniel Forbes and Salon.com and in its attempt to misrepresent MAP. McCaffrey claims that his "proof" that Forbes is "biased" in his coverage is that his articles are reproduced in the MAP news archive. While MAP does indeed encourage sensible alternatives to our failed drug war, our news archive is an unbiased collection of all news articles on drug policy issues from all sources we can find regardless of ideology. We have been archiving these articles since 1997. All are fully searchable on any drug policy related subject and the archive has become the most popular and informative web site on drug policy on either side of the issue. The archive is receiving nearly 3 millions hits per month (far more than any ONDCP web site.) To further demonstrate that McCaffrey and the ONDCP is being intentionally misleading I researched our entire archive of more than 41,000 news articles. I found more than 2,000 which mention Barry McCaffrey and 38 that were actually written by him.By contrast Daniel Forbes is mentioned in only 24 articles and is the author of just 11. I have also received personal email from the ONDCP staff thanking me and MAP for the work it is doing and informing me that General McCaffrey uses our archive daily and would be unable to obtain such concise and timely drug policy news via any other means.Based on the misleading and inaccurate conclusions drawn by McCaffrey in the Action Alert below and the statistics above it must be assumed that it is, in fact, Barry McCaffrey who is biased. Using his dubious rationale it must also be assumed that he is very strongly in favor of drug policy alternatives. Since he has 3 times more articles in our archive he must be 3 times more in favor of drug policy reform than Daniel Forbes.The data can all be verified by searching our archive at: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/See also: http://www.mapinc.org/author/mccaffrey+barry http://www.mapinc.org/author/forbes+dan These facts should clearly point out McCaffrey's lack of logic, honesty, and reason. A search of our archives will demonstrate an impressive history of additional factual inaccuracies, inconsistent claims, and misleading "facts" disseminated by the ONDCP and General McCaffrey in particular. This fact is further augmented by web sites portraying a series of ads documenting his tendency to play fast and loose with facts. See:http://www.csdp.org/ads/pinocchio.htmhttp://www.csdp.org/ads/media.htmhttp://www.csdp.org/ads/troubled.htmhttp://www.csdp.org/ads/resign.htmI respectfully submit that it is not Daniel Forbes or any other investigative reporter who should be accused of bias but the ONDCP and McCaffrey whose intentions, honesty, and reasoning should be called into question.We have nothing against McCaffrey personally but we, like you, are dedicated to fairness and accuracy and the good general has demonstrated no such dedication in fact he consistently seems to demonstrate a complete disregard for fairness, accuracy, truth, science or reason.SincerelyMark GreerExecutive DirectorNote: In an April 2,000 Boston Globe article "On-line Journalist Tangles With Feds Over Antidrug Ad Policy"http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n462/a11.html in a reply from ONDCP to Salon.com, and again in the excerpted Action Alert from Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) below, the ONDCP director Barry McCaffrey and ONDCP assistant director for strategic planning Robert Housman have accused the Media Awareness Project (MAP) of collusion with "biased" journalists. Our reply below clearly demonstrates the intentional fabrications put forth by the ONDCP and their disingenuous smear tactics directed toward MAP and any journalist with the temerity to question ONDCP methods or objectives.Click the link to read all of DrugSense Weekly's Update News:http://drugsense.org/dsw/2000/ds00.n160.htmlCannabisNews MapInc. Archives: http://cannabisnews.com/news/list/MAP.shtml
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