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David Schuster Gets Facts Wrong To Score A Cheap Partisan Point? »
September 26, 2007
NYT Defense For Biased Rate For MoveOn? We Just Didn't Know Which Political Direction the BetrayUs Ad Would Lean In!
Yup. Even though other NYTs staffers admit it violated the paper's policy to give MoveOn such a huge discount (which wasn't really the standby rate as claimed, as standby ads can run any time in a seven day window, and MoveOn wanted the ad to run specifically on the day of Petraeus' testimony), the NYT claims there was "no bias" in the generous discouting because they couldn't even begin to guess what sort of advocacy might run under an ad slammer-headlined "General BetrayUs."
As they had no idea which political way this ad might cut, of course they are innocent of political bias.
They don't think we're "poor, uneducated and easily led" as the Washington Post once declared. They think were actually diagnosably learning-disabled.
UPDATE [Dave in Texas]: MoveOn pays the Times an additional $77,508 for the ad.
Also, some liberal blogger complains (no link, it's in the article) that Rudy Giuliani's campaign should have to pay up too for an ad they ran at the standby rate, but the Times confirms they were not asked to commit to a date and they didn't.