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Censorship has recently been brought to the American public television in two different ways. One being $1 billion in airtime purchased by the Office for National Drug Control and the other method being through a small chip inside all new television sets. In 1997, congress approved a $1billion plan by the Office for National Drug Control to buy Network advertising time at a reduced rate. (Forbes 1) This is a five-year plan that legally requires any network that participates a dollar-for-dollar match for each spot purchased by the government by carrying public service ads by nonprofit groups working with the National Drug Control Policy (NDCP). (Kurtz, Waxman 1) This policy was made attractive to networks by offering credits to those networks that aired television shows that involved so-called “negative-influence” on drugs. The credits enabled the networks to resell the slots that have already been paid for by the government to advertisers. Some of the shows that earned these credits are “ER”, “Chicago Hope”, “Beverly Hills 90210”, “Touched by an Angel”, “The Cosby Show”, “Home Improvement”, “7th Heaven”, “The Drew Carey Show”, and “Sabrina the Teenage Witch”. This attempt at censorship by the government is simply ridiculous. Not only are they bribing the networks to air government controlled T.V. shows but they are also selling back slots that are already paid for by American tax dollars to the networks whose purpose was to inform the public of drugs!
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