Technology is creating new ethical problems for the broadcast media in the United States, technology that is also being used in Latin America.

One issue involves digitally changing the background on televised news stories. Another involves digitally compressing the dialogue on live radio talk shows so that more commercials can be used per hour.

Another issue, which does not involve news nor technology, concerns the submission of scripts for televised programs to the White Houses to see if they compensate for anti-drug commercials.

When CBS Evening News broadcast live from Times Square on New Year's Eve, an advertisement for the program appeared on the side of a building. The image containing the advertisement was digitally inserted in the live programming to cover up an advertisement for NBC, a competing network, which had rented space on the building.

The electronic insertion technology is provided by Princeton Video Image, a company that includes Televisa of Mexico among its clients. The company, known by its initials, PVI, signed a contract last year with Columbia Broadcasting System to provide the technology for the CBS Evening News and other of the network's programs.

"We were looking for some way to brand the neighborhood with the CBS logo," said CBS executive producer Steve Friedman of the network's desire to digitally place its logo in areas around its New York headquarters. "It does not distort the content of the news."

However, Harry Jessell, the editor of Broadcasting & Cable magazine, which first carried the story, disagrees with Friedman. "I think it does raise some ethical questions for CBS," he said. "You would think that a TV news organization would not tamper with video, especially live video. Viewers should be able to rely on the fact that what they are seeing is actually there."

Journalism ethicists have pondered the question of when the manipulation of images becomes unethical. The answer: when reality becomes distorted.

PVI's first involvement with the media was at sporting events, digitally inserting advertisements on the space in front of the grandstands.

El Norte of Monterrey, Mexico, one of the most ethical newspapers in the world, also does something with advertising at sporting events. It airbrushes them out of photographs it uses, on the grounds that they would constitute free advertising in the newspaper.

Rush Limbaugh, the foremost talk-show host on radio in the United States, was surprised when listeners late last year started sending him e-mails asking if there were more commercials being placed on his three hour, live program. To his surprise, he discovered that there were more commercials.

The radio station originating the broadcast of Limbaugh's program was using technology developed for television by a company called Prime Image. The company's so-called Time Machine compresses audio and visual signals on television to permit more commercials.

Because viewers are more conscious of space dedicated to commercials, the technology was never a success in television, although Prime Image's president, Bill Hendershot, said 250 stations had purchased the Time Machine. The company, based in San José, California, last year introduced a version for radio, appropriately called Cash, or Dinero. "Listeners won't even notice it," says Prime Image's Web site. "Yet it allows broadcasters to add 60 seconds of commercial time or more every 10 minutes. And it works in real time, right on the air."

If radio listeners in Latin America are like those of the Russ Limbaugh show, they might notice the speeded up programs because Prime Image markets Cash from offices in Mexico City, Caracas, Buenos Aires and Santiago.

The technology allows a radio station to eliminate pauses and silent moments and speed up the conversation. When Limbaugh realized what was happening, he said that he paused for dramatic effect. The station stopped using the technology on his program.

Again, was reality being distorted, or just speeded up, by the technology?

All major networks were embarrassed when Salon.com, the Internet news organization, revealed that they had submitted over 100 episodes of some of their programs, such as "ER," "Chicago Hope," "General Hospital," "Trinity," "Providence" and "Beverly Hills 90210" to the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy run by the federal drug czar, Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey. The networks – ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, WB and UPN – did so because of a $200 million a year anti-drug advertising campaign approved by Congress in 1997. Under it, the networks were to provide a free anti-drug commercial for every one the government bought.

When the networks found that they were selling all of their advertising space and had none to give to the government, an arrangement was worked out with the White House drug office under which they were given credit for anti-drug messages in the shows they carried. Hence submission of scripts.

"Has the federal government embarked on an illegal payola scam with the nation's television networks?" asked Salon.com, which spent six months investigating the issue.

All networks denied that they were giving creative control of their programs to the White House.

Alan Levitt, an official in the drug policy office, told The New York Times that the networks saved over $20 million by including anti-drug scenes or messages in the scripts.

"It sounds like a form of propaganda that is, in effect, for sale," said media watchdog Bill Kovach, curator of the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University.

Said The New York Times in a lead editorial January 18: "… it is a deeply unhealthy arrangement that should disturb anyone who believes in the need for all media – the entertainment industry as well as the networks – to remain free from government meddling."

The publicity given the issue prompted the White House to drop the review of scripts. "There can be no suggestion of federal interference in the creative process," said General McCaffrey in a letter to the news media January 19. "Accordingly, in the future we will review programs for pro bono match consideration only after they have been broadcast."