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yellow journalism OF CONSTITUTIONAL FREEDOMS, CRAVENLY UNZIPPING THEMSELVES FOR DRUG TESTING? BY CAROL LLOYD | Fifteen years ago if you presented your prospective employer with a plastic cup brimming with your fresh, warm piss, chances are you might not land the job. Now such ritual offerings of bodily fluid are not only acceptable but practically mandatory as pre-employment drug testing spreads like a urine stain throughout our corporate culture. It isn't difficult to imagine why a company like Exxon -- with a disaster like the Valdez oil spill tarnishing its history -- would institute a strict drug-screening policy among its safety-sensitive workers. Or even a traditional consumer company like Clorox, whose corporate culture tends to mirror its product: all-American, old-fashioned and homogeneous. But the fact that drug testing has become almost ubiquitous at newspapers -- those bastions of free speech and individual rights -- is pretty damn strange. This month the Washington Post joined the ranks of other venerable newsrooms -- New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle and all Knight-Ridder publications, to name just a few -- with its implementation of pre-employment drug testing. "We simply wanted to support a drug-free and alcohol-free workplace," said deputy editor Milton Coleman, explaining that the policy had been in place for some time but that the editorial offices had ignored it. When asked if the decision had been prompted by an incident -- say, two editors mainlining in a bathroom stall while deadlines flew by like hallucinations -- Coleman replied, "No. There was no precipitating event." Although not all newspaper officials were as enthusiastic as Coleman, many of those surveyed by Salon gave their whole-hearted approval of the policy. Marianne Chin, director of editorial hiring at the San Francisco Chronicle, said the paper's two-year policy came from wanting "a drug-free workplace to insure the safety of our employees." Jim White, editor for hiring and development for the L.A. Times, said he has no qualms about the usefulness or appropriateness of drug testing, adding, "It just hasn't been an issue, and it doesn't seem to bother anybody." A moment before, however, he told me that a few applicants had refused to take the test, citing their principles. "But there's the assumption that they refuse because they fear they'll fail," he explained. Perhaps that is why objections to the test are so rare. Any protest may sully your reputation and paint you as an addict in denial. Coleman was careful to add that the Washington Post maintains a "very compassionate policy" toward currently employed drug abusers and alcoholics. "Many of our newsroom employees have formed a network of their own and some of them have even committed journalism about their addictions," he said. Coleman's comments imply that the Post has left behind the era of hard-drinking journalists for wholesome 12-step groups and first-person confessionals. That may be true at the Post, but elsewhere many editors and writers asserted that alcoholism is still pervasive in newsrooms. But, of course, the whiz quiz can't screen for alcohol abuse, since booze stays in your bloodstream for only a few hours. Urine tests are leaky in other ways as well. Since they only detect levels of metabolites in the body, the tests often misread over-the-counter medication and food as illegal drugs. Ibuprofen has been known to show up as marijuana; poppy seeds as heroin; and Nyquil as amphetamines. Coleman assured me that individuals can inform the laboratory of any medications that might be mistaken as drug traces, but employees who want to keep their medical history private are out of luck. Once an employer has your urine, moreover, many states don't have laws limiting what they can do with it. For example, in 1988, the Washington, D.C., police admitted that they had used drug tests to screen female employees for pregnancy without their consent or knowledge. With newspapers being bought out by big media conglomerates and newspaper chains' cookie-cutter journalism taking over newsrooms, maybe it's no surprise to see reporters becoming just another bunch of cogs in the corporate machine. But the fact that the press is submitting with barely a whimper to the drug-testing juggernaut has a seeping, insidious effect upon everyone's civil liberties. When the issue of workplace screening first hit the courts in the mid-1980s, no newspapers had drug-testing programs, and the practice was hotly debated in the press. Lately, however, criticism seems to have dwindled to a wee trickle, even though numerous cases are still being litigated and both the American Civil Liberties Union and the Newspaper Guild still argue that suspicionless drug testing constitutes an infringement of Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. Drug-testing laws differ from state to state, and as of mid-1997, only Montana, Iowa, Vermont and Rhode Island had explicit bans against suspicionless testing. "About seven years ago there was a lot of talk about drug-testing policy and laws," said Jeremy Gruber, legal director of the ACLU's task force on civil liberties in the workplace. "Since then the situation has partly solidified, giving the employers cart blanche. But it's true, there has not been a lot of attention to it from the press." As director of the national office of the Newspaper Guild, Linda Foley has been fighting against the policy of pre-employment testing (and often losing) since 1988, when the union lost the right to bargain for job applicants at the Minneapolis Star. "Now virtually all major newspapers do pre-employment drug testing," Foley bemoaned. When asked if individual journalists had filed many court cases objecting to the practice, she hesitated. "I do get calls from people sometimes, but they rarely leave their names," Foley said. "I suppose they're afraid they won't get hired." John True, a lawyer who has argued several ACLU cases against pre-employment screening, couldn't remember any cases brought by journalists either. High school athletes? Sure. Government workers? Yes. Even some technical writers -- but journalists? "I'm almost sure there hasn't been one," he said. 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