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April 20, 2000 |  Dear Editor:

The purpose of this letter is twofold. First, I write to once again ask Salon.com to set the record straight with respect to the errors in Salon's earlier reporting, which were set out in my last letter. Second, I write to raise factual errors with respect to the latest article in Salon, "The Drug War Gravy Train."

Salon has an obligation to correct the record about openness

In my prior letter, ONDCP [Office of National Drug Control Policy] provided you with extensive documentation that proves that, contrary to the reporting of Mr. Forbes and Salon, the Youth Campaign was in no way secret. In fact, well before Salon's focus on the Youth Campaign, as we documented for you, the use of content within the match element of the Youth Campaign had appeared on the front page of the Los Angeles Times and on the pages of USA Today. It was also the subject of opinion editorials by Director McCaffrey in papers across the nation. We had also testified extensively about this element of the Youth Campaign before the Congress. And, it was the Congress that actively voted to require the match requirement of the Youth Campaign and to allow for the use content.

As my earlier letter underscored, based on these facts the New York Times Sunday Magazine, which relied on Salon's reporting in calling the Youth Campaign secret, has had to subsequently correct the record. Moreover, the New York Times' inaccurate comments about the Youth Campaign were far more restrained than those that appeared in Salon.

We must, once again, formally call upon Salon to retract its reporting that the Campaign was secret. As Salon seeks to establish a niche as legitimate journalism on the Internet, it is imperative that your readers have full confidence in the factual basis of your reporting. Allowing such a clear error as this to go unanswered is not only wrong, it will undermine Salon's long-term credibility. Certainly, if the New York Times, one of the nation's most respected newspapers, felt the obligation to correct the record, Salon, which actually started this false allegation, should do so as well.

Salon has a particular obligation to correct errors of fact in Salon's prior reporting because in his recent column Mr. Forbes writes that ONDCP's relationship with television networks "was revealed in Salon earlier this year." This repeated error of fact, after we have made this error clear to Salon, is completely unacceptable. As we stated in our last letter Salon "no more broke this story or uncovered some trumped up secret than did any reader of the August 20, 1998 Los Angeles Times or the November 2, 1998 USA Today."

Salon's continuing pattern of factual errors

In addition to the errors in Salon's prior reporting, your latest article about the Youth Campaign continues to completely ignore the facts. Each of the following factual errors are so clear that they too require Salon to correct the record.