Get Herald RSSOXFORD - Troubling allegations of unfair advertising practices have been made against the New York Times in connection with an ad placed by a liberal Political Action Committee opposed to the war in Iraq. To make this already interesting matter even more intriguing, the Times has raised these charges against itself in an extraordinary opinion piece ("Betraying Its Own Best Interests," Sept. 23) written by its Public Editor, Clark Hoyt, whose job is to serve the public interest.
What I am referring to is the uproar that has arisen from the ad placed by MoveOn.org in the Times ("General Petraeus or General Betray Us," Sept. 10) - one that personally attacked the loyalty and truthfulness of General David H. Petraeus the day he appeared before Congress to give his long-awaited assessment of the war in Iraq. In the frank estimation of the Time's Hoyt, this "ad violated the Time's own written standards, and the paper now says that the advertiser got a break it was not entitled to."
The facts, as Hoyt reports them, are that MoveOn.org paid a stand-by rate of $64,575 for the ad but did not have to wait up to seven days for its publication like other stand-by customers. Instead, it received a guaranteed publication date, an advertising perk that should have cost $142,083. The result was a sweetheart deal for MoveOn.org that permitted it to schedule this ad against Petraeus with the tactical precision of a pre-emptive military strike. To compound matters, Hoyt also believes that the ad violated the Times' established internal policy to reject "opinion advertisements that are attacks of a personal nature."
The Times' reaction to these charges has been a curious mixture of denial and retraction. First, it defended the MoveOn.org discount as proper. Then one of its advertising representatives candidly conceded that the discount violated the advertising policy of the Times. And though the Times' executive responsible for approving the ad disagrees with Hoyt's conclusion about its combative content, it is difficult to understand how an ad effectively accusing a respected general of treason could be construed as anything other than a personal attack on his honor.
In fact, the ad exemplifies the very worst in political attack ads. First, it recklessly accuses Petraeus of "cooking the books for the White House." Then, it assaults him for being a general "at war with the facts." And if those personal attacks were not enough, it insultingly questions the loyalty of General Petraeus as if he were a kind of modern Benedict Arnold.
Though conservatives and liberals alike have rightly condemned this ad, it is unclear to me whether or to what extent the Times deliberately gave MoveOn.org an unfair advantage to serve the anti-war editorial aims of the paper. One plausible, and certainly more charitable, conclusion is that some folks at the Times simply made an honest mistake.
However, the fact that employees at the Times broke, or, at the very least, seriously bent two established policies is as curious as it is troubling. So, too, is the reluctance and failure of some at the Times to own up to these mistakes. Thus, even if there were not actual improprieties committed, the Times has created the appearance of impropriety through its clumsy handling of this matter. That is why many question whether the Times allowed its editorial views to unfairly interfere with its advertising policies.
Because this controversy raises troubling issues about journalistic fairness, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher of the Times, should address this matter with clarity and candor. However, the best response Sulzberger could grudgingly muster for Hoyt is that "Perhaps we did err in this case. If we did, we erred with the intent of giving greater voice to the people."
Far be it from me to suggest that the publisher of one of the world's most prestigious papers offered a lame, or perhaps even disingenuous, excuse. Still, it strikes me as more than passing strange for anyone to conclude that the tripe in the MoveOn.org ad somehow "gives voice to the people." Has our national compulsion to think the worst of people devolved to such an extent that even the publisher of the Times now conflates ad hominem attacks with political discourse? And since when does MoveOn.org, or any PAC for that matter, give voice to anything but their own factional interests?
Though Sulzberger's response is disappointing, the remarkable thing about the Times is that it has the institutional integrity to investigate and expose its failings to the public. The Times does not have to employ a public editor like Clark Hoyt to represent its readers in this manner. Yet it does, because a newspaper must speak the truth to power - even if that power is wielded by the newspaper itself. Were it otherwise, freedom of the press might become nothing more than a self-defeating nullity.
Former Herald Arts & Culture Editor Lindsey Meyers '09 is seeing her best interests betrayed by the falling U.S. dollar.
