NYT ombudsman confirms: MoveOn got a price break it didn’t deserve
posted at 12:02 pm on September 23, 2007 by Allahpundit
$142,083 for a full-page ad guaranteed to run on a date certain. $64,575 for a full-page “standby” ad to run on any date of the paper’s choosing within a seven-day period. MoveOn got the date-certain guarantee but paid the standby price even though the ad was foreseeably controversial and ran on the very morning of Petraeus’s hotly anticipated testimony, when the ad reps logically should have been charging an arm and a leg for space. What happened?
It was a “mistake.”
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…
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.”
The ombudsman, Clark Hoyt, also smacks them for letting MoveOn skate on the “Betray Us” crap. The point to take away here is that, as far as I know, Bob Owens was the first person to wonder publicly about the price of the ad but he did so with no evidence to justify his suspicion. All he had to go on was the Times’s shrill institutional anti-war leftism and his own overweening contempt for the media’s ethical standards. And darned if he wasn’t exactly right. Underestimate them at your peril.
Blowback
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How many NYT employees are donors to moveon?
roninacreage on September 23, 2007 at 12:05 PM
It’s no mistake their stock value continues to nosedive.
JammieWearingFool on September 23, 2007 at 12:06 PM
The New York Times must really take us for a bunch of dummies if they want us to believe that crap.
SoulGlo on September 23, 2007 at 12:06 PM
Oh I never underestimate just how intellectually dishonest the New York Slimes can be.
doriangrey on September 23, 2007 at 12:12 PM
AP, I remember you ran a post about an attack column in the LAT about Fred, and when a bunch of us ragged about it being the LAT, you said something along the lines of, “So, just cause it’s from the LAT you think it’s a lie?”
These are the type of incidents that I think about when a story from the NYT, LAT, or WaPo comes out. Needless to say, I believe almost nothing from these publications. So, do you think this is still a stupid thing to do, or do I just need to get better at seperating the wheat from the chaff?
VolMagic on September 23, 2007 at 12:12 PM
Yeah, and? I link the Times every day on this site. There’s probably no news source I cite more often than I do them. Michelle has praised John Burns and the Times’s Iraq coverage on the O’Reilly Factor, for heaven’s sake. If you’re picking and choosing which Times stories you believe and don’t believe simply on the basis of which ones you want to be true and don’t want to be true than you’re nothing but a Truther.
Allahpundit on September 23, 2007 at 12:17 PM
I have a feeling in the minds of the NYT, the mistake was that they got caught.
katieanne on September 23, 2007 at 12:21 PM
Well, you answered my question even if you did so in a very angry way.
VolMagic on September 23, 2007 at 12:21 PM
Underestimate Bob Owens at your peril…and the rest of the fact-checking blogosphere as well.
Bob's Kid on September 23, 2007 at 12:22 PM
Pretty much covering yourself on all sides there bro. Way to go.
JiangxiDad on September 23, 2007 at 12:24 PM
I don’t accept the explanation that someone in advertising made a “mistake,” here. A “mistake” that amounts to about a 60% discount is a pretty big one, and not likely to be the result of a mere slip-up.
Freedom’s Watch’s FEC complaint is starting to look more compelling, in light of this development.
SWLiP on September 23, 2007 at 1:03 PM
Why should we have a problem with the Times‘ discount ad. After all, don’t we discount everything they print?
Dr. Charles G. Waugh on September 23, 2007 at 1:18 PM
A “mistake”? Riiight, the mistake was they got caught.
Miss Cleo says Hoyt best watch his back.
petefrt on September 23, 2007 at 1:33 PM
I would agree with that principle, but I have trouble distinguishing the reason the Fred story was down-played and the Rumsfeld story up-played. They seemed equally tenuous and personally-motive-driven to me.
Spirit of 1776 on September 23, 2007 at 1:44 PM
Declined, that is BS. There is no such person and no such $77,508 mistake. Is there anyone reading this who can make a $77,508 mistake and not be shown the door in a New Yuk minute?
Wade on September 23, 2007 at 2:01 PM
I finished “Lone Survivor” yesterday. There were many times during my reading that if I could get my hands on these type of media whores, I could have strangled the life out of them.
Dirty rotten 8astards is what they are!
csdeven on September 23, 2007 at 2:06 PM
‘It was a “mistake.”’
Bullsh*t!
Whoever told Hoyt it was a mistake was LYING. Or, perhaps, Hoyt is lying himself.
Pinch (Arthur Schulzberger, Jr., the publisher) told them to run it. He’s anti-war, anti-Bush, and far-left liberal/anti-American. This story is designed to cover HIS butt. If anybody believes that Pinch is NOT embedded in the Moveon/Soros/Democratic Party cabal OR that running this ad was not part of his personal liberal agenda, they need to have their brains checked because they’re a few fries short of a Happy Meal.
Remember, Pinch is the guy who told his father during Vietnam that in a mano-a-mano duel between an American and a Vietcong/NVA, he’d root for the VC.
Sulzberger, for those who don’t know, is number 2 in Bernie Goldberg’s 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (And Al Franken is #37).
georgej on September 23, 2007 at 2:21 PM
All these powerful media people, and they’re gonna blame it on a clerk in the advertising department. A really nice bunch of folks, these people are. “Hey Juan, remember when we told you it didn’t matter if you have a Social security number to work here? Well we’re gonna have to collect on that little debt now. Get out there and tell them this was your fault, ¿Comprenda?
Rational Thought on September 23, 2007 at 2:25 PM
Well of course the New Amsterdam Times* is a lefty organization. I am impressed that the Public Editor admitted both claims (pricing, and content violated their policies).
* (When they quit talking about “Al Queda in Mesopotamia” I’ll quit calling them the New Amsterdam Times)
gekkobear on September 23, 2007 at 2:34 PM
And now for the follow-up:
Is anyone checking into whether or not the nearly $80,000 political contribution has been properly recorded and reported?
Rusty Bill on September 23, 2007 at 2:42 PM
Yet another case of bad behavior on the part of libs and the press, where conservatives and bloggers expose it, the media and libs deny any wrong doing until the story fades, and then the admission of the wrong doing comes when no one is paying attention. Similar to all the bogus scandals that are invented to attack the White House. When accusations are made, they’re headlines… when the accusations later turn out to be false, it’s boring and “old news”, so we never hear about it.
RightWinged on September 23, 2007 at 2:54 PM
You are right on. That is a great Clinton tactic, just say it is old news, change the subject and move on completely ignoring the subject.
Wade on September 23, 2007 at 3:54 PM
Well, that, and a PDF of their 2007 rate ad sheet for advocacy ads, but yeah, you’re pretty much right.
Bob Owens on September 23, 2007 at 4:46 PM
The New York Times is little more than the American version of the former Soviet Union’s Pravda.
When you need your daily fix of subversive communist propoganda and want to feed your head with rebel-without-a-clue sustenance, read the New York Times.
SilverStar830 on September 23, 2007 at 6:30 PM
I mentioned today to an editor of the NYT that Napeleon was cool for reputing torture. He made a sneering comment that Napeleon is different than the power in Washington today. He also seems to believe that most of the people in Gitmo are innocent victims of a witch hunt. He called my stories to the contrary anecdotal.
thuja on September 23, 2007 at 7:44 PM
and now moveon, is wiring the difference to the NYT tomorrow. I take it because Hotair os on the case… they want to take the air out of this argument and they want to take 77k from Guliani.
MOVEON.ORG to pay NY TIMES full price…
Kaptain Amerika on September 23, 2007 at 8:19 PM
It was a botched joke.
saint kansas on September 24, 2007 at 5:47 AM
I agree. And let’s not forget it wasn’t just “a” mistake, it was two or more mistakes (personal attack, family rate…) and both mistakes just happened to let slide an ad that coincided with the NYT liberal slant.
And I also can’t believe it was a single person who made these “mistakes”.
So in summary, multiple people made the same (multiple) mistakes and nobody pointed out the error because… it was all a mistake???
taznar on September 24, 2007 at 10:43 AM