NY Times Public Editor on Moveon.org Ad: Mistakes Were Made

How egregious was the NY Times’ decision to run Moveon.org’s scurrilous attack ad on General Petraeus? Even the Times’ ombudsman can’t put a positive spin on it.

Did MoveOn.org get favored treatment from The Times? And was the ad outside the bounds of acceptable political discourse?

The answer to the first question is that MoveOn.org paid what is known in the newspaper industry as a standby rate of $64,575 that it should not have received under Times policies. The group should have paid $142,083. The Times had maintained for a week that the standby rate was appropriate, but a company spokeswoman told me late Thursday afternoon that an advertising sales representative made a mistake.

The answer to the second question is that the ad appears to fly in the face of an internal advertising acceptability manual that says, “We do not accept opinion advertisements that are attacks of a personal nature.” Steph Jespersen, the executive who approved the ad, said that, while it was “rough,” he regarded it as a comment on a public official’s management of his office and therefore acceptable speech for The Times to print.

Remember, none of the Democratic Senators running for President voted to condemn this despicable bit of anti-military bile.

posted by DrewM. at 01:25 PM

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