No Liberal Bias At The Times

Timeswoman Katherine Seelye pursues the "General Betray Us" discounted ad puzzle and delivers a great laugher.  Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis explained to Ms. Seelye why there was no bias displayed by the ad department when they gave a discount to MoveOn:

The newspaper had maintained that it charged MoveOn the same “standby” rate of $64,575 that it charges all advocacy groups for full-page, black-and-white advertisements that can run anytime in a seven-day window. But the newspaper’s spokeswoman, Catherine Mathis, was quoted Sunday by The Times’s public editor, Clark Hoyt, as saying an advertising sales representative had “made a mistake” in granting the discount.

The sales representative should have charged $142,083, she said, because MoveOn wanted the advertisement to run on a specific day — Monday, Sept. 10 — and was therefore not entitled to the “standby” rate.

In a follow-up interview yesterday, Ms. Mathis declined to comment on how the original mistake occurred or how it came to light.

Asked if the sales representative was sympathetic to MoveOn or was unaware of the pricing policy, Ms. Mathis said: “The salesperson did not see the content of the ad at the time the rate was quoted. There was no bias.”

No bias!  Because the sales rep had no idea at all which side of the issue MoveOn was taking!

The story reprises a bit of the background:

MoveOn.org said yesterday that it paid The New York Times $77,508 after the newspaper revealed that its advertising department had undercharged the organization for an advertisement that ran two weeks ago and proved controversial.

Many critics, including some of the Republican presidential candidates as well as Vice President Dick Cheney, had accused the newspaper of giving subsidized rates to MoveOn, a liberal antiwar organization, out of sympathy with its views. The advertisement challenged the credibility of Gen. David W. Petraeus, commander of the American forces in Iraq, and asked whether he should be called “General Betray Us.”      

However, the Times Public Editor stirred the pot last Sunday, as Ms. Seelye explains:

The newspaper had maintained that it charged MoveOn the same “standby” rate of $64,575 that it charges all advocacy groups for full-page, black-and-white advertisements that can run anytime in a seven-day window. But the newspaper’s spokeswoman, Catherine Mathis, was quoted Sunday by The Times’s public editor, Clark Hoyt, as saying an advertising sales representative had “made a mistake” in granting the discount.

For some odd reason Ms. Seelye mentions the criticism of the ad and/or the Times from the right (President Bush, Rudy Giuliani and Dick Cheney are named, as well as "some of the Republican presidential candidates"), but she neglects to mention that the Senate voted by 72-35 to condemn the ad.  Since Joe Biden, Elizabeth Edwards and eventually even Hillary Clinton spoke out against the ad, one might say we have achieved a rare bipartisan consensus here, although Ms. Seelye didn't notice it.

But there is no liberal bias at the Times.  Glad they cleared that up.

Comments

[kim]

Paging Corky Boyd.
===============

[cathyf]

Oh, and there is another issue that probably could use some investigation. The GenBTU ad needed to run on a particular day, but I could see that most of the time when an advocacy group wants to run an advocacy ad the timing is such that a standby arrangement (especially with a 60% discount) would satisfy their needs just fine. This is also implied by the excuse that the advertising sales rep made the mistake -- if that's really true, the most innocent explanation is that virtually all of these ads really do run standby and so it's become a mental habit. So that brings up two questions which I'd love to have answered:

1) Do all advocacy groups get offered the standby rate if they allow their ad to run standby?

2) Saturday has the lowest circulation, while Sunday has the highest. Do groups that the NYT agrees with get their standby ads on Sunday while groups that they disagree with get their ads on Saturday?

I also have a question for Tom. What was this sentence supposed to say?

Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis explained to Ms. Seelye why there was no displayed by the ad department when they gave a discount to MoveOn

[kim]

Corky's pont was that the Times should be in trouble with the FTC over offering different rates, and certainly is with their advertisers. This was bias on the business side; a no no no no no.
======

[kim]

Also, any discount on advocacy advertising can be suspect on two counts, one is that this is the gravy of newspaper advertising, and there better be a good business reason for a discount. The other is in the nature of advocacy, a discount to an advocate is donation to the cause of the advocate, which is what has us all smelling something rotten. Well, it isn't just rotten, it's illegal.
========================

[kim]

I'm enjoying the irony of the Betray Us ad betraying the Times instead.
=======================

[CDeBoe]

Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis explained to Ms. Seelye why there was no >insert "bias"< displayed by the ad department

[clarice]

So she didn't mention the Senate vote--really TM, you can't expect her to put everything little old thing in this piece.

[tyler]

Don't forget NYT ethics columnist Randy Cohen was revealed to have actually donated to MoveOn.org.

[Ralph L]

Kim, and helping Bush and the war effort, too. I'm hoping the poisonous hatred at Kos, etc., overflows in front of the general public before the election.

[cathyf]

kim, a discount for a standby rate is a good, solid business reason. Newspapers need to publish using an even number of pages, given a fixed page size, 365 days per year. Yeah, I can see that on a day where the paper just happens to comes up as an odd number of pages then you can buy a page worth of advertising for very very cheap -- because their other choice is to have a blank page. I suspect that a newspaper's biggest advertisers get an arrangement where whenever there is leftover space in an edition, they get an ad slotted into the space for free, and that the ad reps have a couple of ads of different sizes and shapes already in a file ready to go for just this possibility. And that is also a completely valid business purpose.

[Dr. Kenneth Noisewater]

Senate voting 72-35? Where'd the extra 4 states sneak in there?

[kim]

Yes, cf, and their argument now is that it didn't deserve the discount. But what do their books say, and what do their advertisers say?
=======================================

[Kevin R.C. 'Hognose' O'Brien]

Quote:

Ms. Mathis said: “The salesperson did not see the content of the ad at the time the rate was quoted. There was no bias.”

Er, but the Public Editor said that the salesman thought the Ad was OK because of the question mark.

It's funny how the Times errs as much as you would expect any large org to, but all the errors trend in the same direction. That defies probability, and suggests that there's something happening here besides random error.

But, really, we knew that.

[clarice]

What are the odds ANSWER and others didn't get similar deals?

[Kevin R.C. 'Hognose' O'Brien]

Apologies for the improperly closed blockquote tag.

[Forbes]

Umm, it took the NYTimes nearly two weeks to "discover" that someone in advertising sales made a "mistake"?

In the face of the highly visible scrutiny and criticism the ad created, how could it take more than one day to determine such a mistake was made?

Pathetic. How stupid does the Times think Americans are?

I'm not buying it, but then I stopped buying the Times a long time ago!

[fdcol63]

Bias?

What are the chances that the Swift Boat Vets could have gotten the discounted "standby" rate from the NYT?

Zero.

[Rick Ballard]

"because their other choice is to have a blank page."

No, no, no - don't forget that there is a plethora of propagandists sitting in their cubbies in that building (that is worth more than the "business" side of the Times) completely capable of generating enough drivel to fill any page.

If the Times were an actual business, then you would be absolutely correct - standby rates are no different than the airline's fare adjustments due to seat availability. In this instance, Junior Sulberger was able to advance the type of vicious propaganda that he so dearly loves and get paid for it and (theoretically, anyway) avoid responsibility for the ad content.

The decision to run the ad shows all the subtle acumen displayed in tearing down the fence that was keeping the geriatric Select dung heap from public view. Junior is trapped in a long death spiral - the bond rating agencies are eyeing him now.

I wish him (and his family) the full enjoyment of the ride to oblivion.

[Sue]

72 + 35 = 107. Don't we have 100 senators?

[Sue]

Hmmm...Tom has fat fingers. The link says 72-25.

[cathyf]

But kim, the point is that MoveOn got the standby rate for a non-standby ad, not that there is something inherently wrong with giving advertisers substantial discounts to compensate them for being flexible about the timing of their ads. It is simply good business to give a customer a discount for adapting his purchase in a way that saves the seller money.

The NYT exhibits plenty of real examples of incompetent business practices. There's no need to make any up.

[Rick Ballard]

It was 72-25. Here is the roll call. Obama was AWOL as were Biden and Cantwell.

[HoosierHoops]

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
-Voltaire
But you sure as hell don't get the discounted price..

[Gmax]

Yeah how could anyone guess at what the content might be of an advert. taken out by MoveON.org? No bias here, move along, move along.

[Gmax]

In other news Dan Rather contends that the memos are really really accurate and he was just reading what CBS put in front of him anyway...

Not especially good liars, these progs be.

[kim]

Yes, Cathyf, and the FTC requires that they be evenhanded, by law.
==========================

[Jimh]

Being in the newspaper business, while standby rates are common in these types of cases anything order that would generate that kind of discount would need to go through multiple levels of approvals before it could be processed. In no way was this just a sales executives mistake.

[lyle]

A Times spokesperson says there was no bias involved, that the ad rep couldn't know what MoveOn might say, and that the rep simply 'made a mistake'. Reporter Seelye seems to buy the whole preposterous load.

That's why I stopped reading the Times in the late 1980s. Over and over again, I found myself thinking, 'Are Times reporters that stupid, or do they think their readers are that stupid?'

Both, I guessed. And ultimately, it made no difference. Because either way, the New York Times was an untrustworthy source of information.

[Korla Pundit]

Why is everything so bold?

[Korla Pundit]

Oh, somebody put a closing [/a] tag instead of a closing [/b] tag...

[Korla Pundit]

Senate voting 72-35? Where'd the extra 4 states sneak in there?

Some Senators voted for the bill before they voted against it.

[F]

I see MoveOn has offered to pay the difference between the standby rate and the normal advocacy rate, and now says Giuliani should pony up the difference too. They're obviously hoping to short circuit an investigation by the Federal Election Commission. I say the fact that the deal was made should trigger the FEC investigation, not whether or not they ultimately paid full price. And I think Giuliani should refuse to pay full price: he was offered a rate, and he took it. End of story. Not that this paltry $70,000 difference will break MoveOn, but the irony of MoveOn ultimately paying full price and STILL triggering an investigation, while Giuliani does not, warms my heart. F

[Gmax]

Oh here on the heels of Columbia inviting the holocaust denier, we have exhibit # 2 being Hofstra. They apparently are hosting a legal ethics conference. One invited Speaker? Lynne Stewart who of course was disbarred for her assistance with the blind sheik in smuggling out his communications to the minions.

I wonder if the American Institute of CPAs would consider asking the auditos from Arthur Andersen who audited Enron to give an ethics talk?

[Orion]

but she neglects to mention that the Senate voted by 72-35 to condemn the ad.

Minor nit: There are only 100 members of the Senate, unless Reid has managed to sneak 7 new ones in while we weren't looking. The vote was 72-25, with 3 members absent (Obama, Tim Johnson) or abstaining.

The other problemw with the ad was that the NYT also has a long-standing policy against placing ads with "personal attacks" in them. Otherwise an advocacy group should be able to place a "HILLARY IS A DYKE!" ad for the same rate MoveOn was quoted.

[Sue]

I'm sorry to be so off topic, but I wanted to point out to Jane something we discussed in an earlier thread.

In response to the Camp Meeting Association's ban, two couples seeking to get civil-unioned on the boardwalk have filed complaints with the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights. The Camp Meeting Association has filed a lawsuit to allow it to continue the ban.

http://www.hrcbackstory.org/2007/09/new-jersey-to-o.html>Source

[bmcburney]

What struck me about this whole thing was this comment from the MoveOn Honcho: "Pariser said there was no discussion about a standby rate. 'We paid this rate before, so we recognized it,' he said."

But the ad was time sensitive and Pariser must have known it was time sensitive when he placed it. So, assuming this really is a "mistake" and the NYT does not routinely give MoveOn special treatment, Pariser must have known that the NYT had quoted him the "wrong" rate. But if you have a time sensitive ad and the ad rep quotes you a rate (a rate with which you are familar) and the rate is the "wrong" rate (meaning your time sensitive ad might not run when it is suppose to) that is exactly when you have a discussion with the ad rep. Which means that Pariser's comment makes no sense.

The only way Pariser's comment makes sense (provides an explanation as to why Pariser did not question the rate he was quoted) is if MoveOn was rountinely getting special treatment from the Times on its ads. If MoveOn always gets special treatment from the Times, Pariser would not question the fact that he got a standby rate for a guaranteed date placement.

So, how many times have the Times' ad reps made this particular mistake? (We may have found an explanation for decreasing ad revenues at the NYT.)

[Rick Ballard]

Orion,

Tim Johnson was present and voted 'Aye'. Obama, Biden and Cantwell were the only AWOLs.

[clarice]

GMax, very bad analogy. The charges against Arthur Anderson were pitched by SCOTUS, unfortunately only after the company--a truly fine one--was forced out of business.
The Court held that the destruction of records in the ordinary course of business w/o a hint that they were3 the subject of federal inquiry could not possibly be w/in the purview of the sloppily crafted federal "obstuction" statute.

That prosecution and Enron inspired legislation has made the accounting business an extraordinarily risky one to the detriment of us all.

[MayBee]

bmcburney- I agree. Pariser's comment makes sense if that is the rate they are always given.

[clarice]

Yup. Check out all the MoveOn and ANSWER ads for starters.

[sbw]

The premise that the NYT must have known what it was doing flies in the face of what I know about running newspapers. I am repeatedly bitten in the butt by circumstance. It is why my job as publisher is to make things idiot-resistant, not idiot-proof. Do not -- I repeat -- do not underestimate the skill of idiots to outmaneuver checks and balances.

And, yeh, enough people at the NY Times must have seen the ad before it ran. In all probability it drew little attention because it was in concert with the views of much of the staff. Many of them were probably delighted. But that is different from a malicious interpretation, which gives them too much credit.

[Gmax]

Clarice

I am a CPA by training but have not done audits in sometime. The criminal charges against the company were indeed pitched. If you look carefully I was speaking about the actual auditors of Enron, and the fact that they signed off on what turned out to be horribly inflated numbers. Ethics charges are not criminal, but are actionable by the profession, similarly as the Bar acts.

Its a good analogy and I stand by it, although I do agree with you that the government acted as judge, juror and executioner in the matter of the firm. It was an appalling action, and the legal system has not found a way to unring the bell.

[clarice]

But SBW, that would be true not only of the MoveOn ad but other MoveOn ads, the ANSWER ads, etc. At some point, if my hunch is right, someone higher than the ad taker must have noticed and did nothing.

[PeterUK]

Surely such an inflammatory advertisement was run past the NYT lawyers?

[FD]

Move On should 'Get Over It.' Plame had some friends here that came out right when she complained. Alot of the people who started Move On were retired CIA, so maybe they should wonder about laws and 'getting over it,' but that might be related to CIA breaking IIPA laws of federal employees not employed by CIA and Ames who did the same thing; alot like Plame showing up and investigating Ames, which is why CIA was not allowed to investigate other federal employees or access their files like Ames did.

Get over it might involve a song. The No Fear Act(that has changed ove the years), which would be the excuse for not going to court under IIPA because DOJ allowed illegal access by CIA or an Operations Officer like Plame, should remind federal employees of the DEA's slogan for operations officers. A DEA NOC outside the US as an operations officer might be in trouble based on operations overseas involving inadvertantly poisoning another federal employee overseas during covert operations. The excuse of the whistle blower law would not be valid because no one asked the victim to testify and the operations officer was not asked to court because the employee overseas who was poisoned would not go to the media or court becuase of the IIPA law and the lives that would have been lost like Plame's admission in 'Vanith Fair' and the operatons offices that were asassinated the next day.

Of course the No Fear Act and IIPA both fall under the DOJ, like DEA. Fitzgerald works for DOJ, OSC _ Office of Special Counsel, which does the investigating of IIPA and the No Fear Act(HHS), so he might be biased in investigating the No Fear Act and IIPA, which he handles( the IIPA recipients like those at Harvard). He might prosecute the DEA DOJ employee without testimony from the victim and pass on the CIA employee, which is what happened to the DEA employee(he was set up) because they would not ask the victim what happened. So, we have Ames and Plame. Ames was prosecuted and Plame wasn't. There is no difference, except that Plame and her access to non CIA employee records was not checked like Ames, which is how he was caught, which is why a federal employee might not go to the media and not talk much because of what happened when Plame showed up; Ames repeating itself(alot of spies getting caught, but late in the game and allowed to pass), which resulted in a misunderstanding in the intelligence community and some un american activities by those who thought they were doing the right thing, although illegal.

Move On might wonder at why The NO Fear Act was created. It was created because a DOJ federal employee was set up because he was not allowed to go to court and prove innocence. The theory is the poison was meant for the agent and not the other federal employee, which is why you stay away from those guys.

[Mister Snitch!]

I wonder if inserting a closing tag here will finally solve the all-bold problem?

[Mister Snitch!]

Hmm... guess it's not that simple!

[cathyf]

Is there anyone on the editorial side of the NYT who would recognize that it was an inflammatory advertisement? These are people who believe that "Bush is a poo-poo-head" is a plain, simple, uncontroversial fact.

[cathyf]

Mister Snitch!, I take it that you are using safari... There is a bug in the CSS for the JOM site so that open bold and italic tags stay open over div boundaries, but it is impossible to close a tag over a div boundary. So once one is open, it is impossible to close. Now all of the browsers except safari ignore the rule (technically speaking, safari is not the browser with the bug, but the browser without the bug) so when I put four bold-closing tags a few comments after clarice larwyned the thread it was fixed for everybody not using safari to read the thread.

My recommendation is to use Opera rather than safari. It has lots of other cool features, too. You can also use firefox, but it has some weird pathological interaction with the site, too, where once a thread gets too long it will freeze the browser window when you try to load the thread.

[Gmax]

Well I use firefox and have never experienced anything hinky, lord knows the threads sometime wrap around the block here...

[Sara]

I worked in newspaper advertising for years and there is a single truism. If any error is made, it is a given the ad rep will be the one who gets the blame. Ads that run Sat., Sun, or Mon. usually have a deadline of Friday. However, a full page ad would never run sight unseen nor accepted right on deadline. First the advertiser would need to let the rep know that they want to run a full page ad, so the space could be blocked. (There would never be a blank page, newspapers would run their own ad for circulation, or some other inhouse service, if they have to fill unused space.)

And I can't think of any advertiser I ever had that would run a full page ad without proofing the copy and approving it beforehand. A newspaper is not going to take a chance of the ad containing some error that would cause the newspaper to have to give a full or partial refund because of that error. Artwork would also have to be approved. This ad was inhouse days beforehand, you can bet on it.

[Sara]

I think the Petraus ad is despicable and all that, but where MoveOn is concerned, I'm much more interested in the information now coming out that the whole immigration rally and demonstration last year in Los Angles was a Soros organized and funded event. You remember, kids got out of school, businesses had to let their Hispanic employees off for the day, thousands and thousands of rally goers waving Mexican flags and all that. It is what kicked off the who ginned up immigration brouhaha just before the election and Dems and Reps alike bought into it.

[Sara]

who = whole

[cathyf]

Well I use firefox and have never experienced anything hinky, lord knows the threads sometime wrap around the block here...

Sorry about that -- this is strictly a safari problem and safari only runs on the mac. The firefox problems don't occur on the PC. I know that they occur on the mac, but have no idea about how JOM behaves in various browsers on linux.

[Sara]

A liberal blogger has filed a complaint against the presidential campaign of Republican Rudy Giuliani for breaking federal election laws by accepting a discounted advertisement rate from The New York Times.

The Politico reports that Lane Hudson, a blogger who also recently filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission about the presidential campaign of Republican Fred Thompson, has called on Giuliani's campaign to pay the difference between the full and discounted ad rates.

***********

Isn't Lane Hudson the guy connected to the Foley scandal?

[Sara]

OT - The husband who was married to the 14 year old in the Warren Jeff's case has just been charged with rape. He was 19 at the time.

[Sara]

Via Hot Air:

Sixteen days after the ad appeared in the Times, the final chapter to this travesty is written. The vote was 341-79; here’s the roll if you’re curious to see how it shook out. Italics denote Republicans, roman typeface denotes Democrats. What do the 79 nays have in common?

[PeterUK]

"Isn't Lane Hudson the guy connected to the Foley scandal?"

Yes

[Jane]

Sue,

I can't remember what in particular we were jawing about that the link confirms (or denies).

[Jane]

A liberal blogger has filed a complaint against the presidential campaign of Republican Rudy Giuliani for breaking federal election laws by accepting a discounted advertisement rate from The New York Times.

I saw that yesterday and it just made me laugh.

[clarice]

FD's mysterious post reminds me..How long has it been since Hoekstra asked the CIA general counsel for a ruling whether Plame was covered by the IIPA.

I've seen no reply perhaps I ought to confirm there hasn't been one with Hoekstra's office before I write this up.

[Rick Ballard]

"What do the 79 nays have in common?"

Membership in the Copperhead Caucus is a safe bet. Find a nit - there's a louse somewhere nearby.

[clarice]

I forgot--which Soros operation is funding Lane Hudson--or don't we know yet?

[cathyf]

A liberal blogger has filed a complaint against the presidential campaign of Republican Rudy Giuliani for breaking federal election laws by accepting a discounted advertisement rate from The New York Times.

That's part of the game, and when you try to make something inherently phoney about standby rates you are helping them along. If Rudy's ad ran standby, he was entitled to the rate. Same with Thompson. Same with every other candidate or advocacy group, all across the spectrum. Same with previous MoveOn ads that weren't time-critical. If an ad was really standby, then the standby rate was the correct rate to charge. (And any other rate would be a violation of election laws.)

[Jason Coleman]

I think it's well beyond the time that an investigation should be opened into the rates charged by the NYT for political ads.

It's my opinion, that the NYT (and other news organizations) has previously run afoul of Campaingn Finance laws by giving preferential rates (in kind donations) to certain political candidates based upon their party affiliation and or viewpoints.

[Jane]

I thought lane Hudson was somehow connected to Crew. And there is a Rahm Emmanuel connection as well.

[Sara]

Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive filed the first FEC complaint regarding the NYT and the Petraus ad, the day the ad appeared, IIRC.

[clarice]

Yes, Jane , that's my recollection, too. THough he's been nowhere as successful since Foley. Maybe by next October he'll come up with something better.

[Sara]

For you Schuster buffs, you'll love this take down:

Subbing for MSNBC’s Tucker, the same reporter who confidently (and as it turned out, incorrectly) reported that Karl Rove would be indicted over the Plame case played gotcha with Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn over her not knowing the name of the last soldier from her district to have been killed in Iraq.

SHUSTER: Let’s talk about the public trust. You represent of course a district in western Tennessee. What was the name of the last soldier from your district who was killed in Iraq?

MARSHA BLACKBURN: The name of the last soldier killed in Iraq from my district? I do not know.

SHUSTER: OK, his name was Jeremy Bohannon. He was killed August the ninth, 2007. How come you didn’t know the name?

BLACKBURN: You know, I do not know why I did not know the name. We make contact with the families that are in our district, and when you have a major military post you are very sensitive to this and sensitive to working with those families and that is something that my staff and I do daily. Our district director is a gentleman who has served in the U.S. Army and currently serves in the National Guard, and we do everything that we possibly can do to assist those families. We are very appreciative of the sacrifice –

SHUSTER: Well, you weren’t appreciative enough to know the name of this young man, he was 18 years old who was killed, yet you can say chapter and verse what goes on with the New York Times and MoveOn.org.

Shuster’s game was disgusting and, it’s turning out, wasn’t true to the facts. The soldier he named didn’t live in Blackburn’s district.

It now turns out that Army Private Jeremy Bohannon had not, contrary to Shuster’s claim, lived in Rep. Blackburn’s congressional district. As blogger Conservative Belle brought to NB’s attention, and as she has written about at her site, Private Bohannon lived in Bon Acqua, TN. Checking his nine-digit zip code reveals that he in fact lived in Tennessee District 8, represented by John Tanner, a Democrat.

I have now spoken with an aide in Rep. Blackburn’s office, who confirmed that Pvt. Bohannon had not lived in the congresswoman’s district.

Yes, Mr. Shuster, by all means, let’s talk about the public trust. And why no member of the public should trust you or the network that puts you on the air and doesn’t reprimand you when you get your facts wrong.

[Sara]

That last was Via Hot Air, sorry.

[PaulV]

Long history of libaeral attacks on the military
Kerry's recent smears on their intelligence and winter soldiers' lies.
Turbin Durbin nazi comparison
Clinton abhored military
His sec/state saying that solir were so prett that they should be used or somthing similiar
Dan Rathet, and Mary Mapes & DNC attacks on W service. National guard and reserves were in VN when W joined up to fly F102s. Many thousands of them gave thier lives there. Could this be pattern?

[lifeofthemind]

Shuster’s game was disgusting and, it’s turning out, wasn’t true to the facts. The soldier he named didn’t live in Blackburn’s district.

This really is disgusting. Is there no legal remedy for someone the victim of this type of abuse and slander?

[hit and run]

You did see this, right?

Catherine Mathis, vice president of corporate communications for The Times, said, “We made a mistake.” She said the advertising representative failed to make it clear that for that rate The Times could not guarantee the Monday placement but left MoveOn.org with the understanding that the ad would run then. She added, “That was contrary to our policies.”

Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher of The Times and chairman of its parent company, declined to name the salesperson or to say whether disciplinary action would be taken.

Jespersen, director of advertising acceptability, reviewed the ad and approved it. He said the question mark after the headline figured in his decision.

Matt Cooper to the rescue!

[hit and run]

Well.

George Will, 9/27/2007:

In June, the Times was in high dudgeon -- it knows no other degree of dudgeon...

TM, 5/23/2007:

If it weren't for high dudgeon Mark Kleiman would have no dudgeon at all...

[bgates]

How long has it been since Hoekstra asked the CIA general counsel for a ruling whether Plame was covered by the IIPA?

About a third as long as it's been since Kerry promised to release his military records.

[Jane]

NY Times is now denying that the Betrayus ad was a "personal attack".

[Walter]

It's a red-letter day here a JustOneMinute. Best of the Web linked Tom directly (and deservedly so).

Taranto also covers a court case involving our very own Jeff. But I don't understand what he has against classical music or why the Law was involved. Just another case of frivolous lawyering, I guess.

We're lucky to be able to read their work on a regular basis (or 2/5, at least).

[sbw]

Clarice: At some point, if my hunch is right, someone higher than the ad taker must have noticed and did nothing.

Yes, Clarice, you said it more directly than I did, but the ad likely would not have gotten out of the advertising chain of command. It seems unlikely anyone would have thought it would pinch Pinch in the butt.

Cathyf, seldom does our ad department talk to news folk. Different business. Different life.

[Bostonian]

fdcol63: "What are the chances that the Swift Boat Vets could have gotten the discounted 'standby' rate from the NYT?"

At the time, I heard that the Swifties tried to buy an ad but the NYT refused to run it. Period.

[hit and run]

Walter:
Taranto also covers a court case involving our very own Jeff.

What? I had no idea. And I had doubts about that being true...but, then, at the end of Best of the Web, there it was...

(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Glenn Reynolds, Rosanne Klass, Chris Scibelli, Michael Segal, Daniel Goldstein, Gerry McCracken, Larry Pollack, Don Stewart, Jeff Dobbs...If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

Weird.

[Jane]

Supposedly there is another democrat debate tonite. If I can bear it, I'll live blog it in the less active Jena thread.

[Jane]

Oh H&R, you are the "best of the web" every day!

[hit and run]

Jane:
NY Times is now denying that the Betrayus ad was a "personal attack".

The NY Times is a media organization constantly at war with the facts.

[Walter]

Wierd.

I didn't see an Obama or Edwards piece, so I assumed (with all that implies) that the case was your submission.

On a side note, I've just realized that I've written only HnR-related comments for quite a while. I'll have to commit myself

...

to writing something on topic soon.

[hit and run]

Jane:
If I can bear it, I'll live blog it in the less active Jena thread.

I don't know...sounds like that might be feigned. Last debate you were saying you couldn't stop...

I may not be able to stick around for it. But rest assured, if you do liveblog it, I will not be at peace until I get to read it.

Oh, and just remember, you can't spell Jena without J-A-N-E.

[Molon Labe]

Would be interesting to see if the commission paid to the sales rep for the ad was actually basd on the higher non-standby rate.

[hoosierhoops]

Hit & Run
had not heard much from you in awhile..
Thought you had tried to fix a chainsaw.

[hit and run]

I did operate one two weekends ago. Successfully, without incident.

Ready for fall bonfires. If the dern temps would stay out of the 90s here. At least the statewide ban on open fires has been lifted...that kinda dampened things a bit, unlike the drought we've had this year...

[Ann]

Missed you blue eyes!!

I am still depressed about Ted Olson, Dinner Jacket killing our soldiers and landing in this country to applause, and Hillary and Bill getting away with the usual. Whats to post?

I wish American would wake up. Oh well.

GO JANE

[narciso]

It is easy to confuse VIPS (theintelligence branch of the marxist Institute for Policy Studies which hosts the likes of Plame-baiter like Larry "Terrorism is not a problem" Johnson, Vince,"Iraq was behind OKC, stop looking at me like that'
Cannistraro; Frank Snepp's Israeli baiting
Christison duo, 9/11 truther and liberation
theologist Ray McGovern, and Dean of the Saudi lobby, former Riyadh station chief
Ray Close with MoveOn.org. but the're not the same. Their goals and methods are often
the same; much like a venn diagram. By the way, what's the skinny on the judge who threw out two parts of the Patriot Act
today.

[km]

Here's the odd thing. Eli Pariser says they'd paid that rate before. Yet, in all of the MoveOn.org Political Action FEC filings since 1993, there's just one entry for New York Times advertising. And that was for $7,500 in 2005. The only other Times entries are for subscriptions and NYT employee contributions.

More here.

[clarice]

Interesting, Kim!

[cathyf]

Taranto also answers another question:

A spokesman for the Giuliani campaign said that it would not pay the difference because The Times did not guarantee when it would run the advertisement. "Our ad not only met the acceptability standards of The New York Times, but it was placed at the standby rate with no commitment it would run on a specific date," the spokesman said.

[Catherine] Mathis, The Times spokeswoman, confirmed that the newspaper did not commit to a specific date.

[Ralph L]

From BotW:
Breaking News From 1745
"Judge Tosses Hit-and-Run Charge vs. Bach"--

been googling yourself again, eh?

[PeterUK]

"NY Times is now denying that the Betrayus ad was a "personal attack"."

In Britain that would have got both MoveOn and the NYT sued.
I do not believe the advertising department does not scrutinise adverts for content.

[kim]

It was late, but your clue should have been the link. Despite taking two weeks to do it, it still doesn't sound like Moveon and the NYT got their stories straight. I'm particularly intrigued by Pinch's remarks about 'erring on the side of public discourse', echoing legal justification for his outrage.
===================

[The Librarian]

Link to the Seelye piece?

Not really sure I buy anyone's argument on this yet... except the one TM mentions as a laugher.

The standby ad could have possibly been printed on the day in question, according to the standby agreement, although it does seem to be too much happy coincidence.

However, Hoyt says that the content of the ad was a definite wrong because is contained a personal attack. This the Times ought to be shouldering first.

[kim]

Does Petraeus have recourse, or would a proxy?
=========================

[kim]

I like the fact that the spin right around the incident was that the Democrats wouldn't say such thing; they expected others to do it. This was followed by virtually no condemnation among the Democrats except for a few exceptions, like, notably, John Kerry. Now, however, that it is turning into a stink, the Democrats are starting to condemn it. They let their anti-war fervor carry them too far from the facts, and have basically been rope-a-doped about Iraq in the last few months. Now this NoKo in Syria lends real dimensions to the 'axis of evil'. Maybe I'm a little speculative, but this smells like a big policy change among the Democrats.
========================

[Jane]

I can't imagine Petreaus or a proxy would have the time or inclination to take recourse. He could bring a libel case I suppose, which, because he is a public figure would fall under NY Times v Sullivan, which if I recall correctly, requires that the malice be purposeful - which surely it was.

I'd rather see him run for President the next time around, instead.