NY Times Scandal: Pro-War = Full Price, Anti-War = “It’s On Us”

Posted From: Pat Dollard’s Blog

The New York Times is a de-facto co-author of MoveOn.Org’s smear of General “Betray Us”, in that they underwrote a substantial portion of the ad’s cost - the cost that matters the most, and actually costs the most, which is the cost of priniting it in the New York Times.

“Freedom’s Watch spokesman Matt David, however tells me the group was charged “significantly more” than MoveOn.org for its ad.”

ABC News:

Does Ideology Matter in NYT ads?

September 13, 2007 10:10 AM

After I reported earlier in the week on the controversy surrounding the MoveOn.org ad in the New York Times (LINK), some conservative bloggers seized upon my reporting that MoveOn.org claims to have paid about $65,000 for the full-page ad.

Many speculate (LINK) this represents a dramatic discount of normal ad rates, and today the New York Post (LINK) repeats the charge.

New York Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis tells me that it’s Times policy to not “disclose the rate that any one advertiser pays for an ad. The rate that is charged for an ad will depend on a variety of factors including how frequently the advertiser advertises with us, the day of the week, is it color, is it black and white, what section it appears, all of those kinds of things.”

Mathis says the newspaper tries “to keep our advertising columns as open as possible” and “there are many instances when we’ve published opinion advertisements that run counter to the stance that we take on our own editorial pages.” As an example of how the Times is open to all points of view in advertisers, Mathis points out that on September 11, 2007, “we published a full-page advertisement from Freedom’sWatch.org, an organization whose view is opposite of MoveOn.org.”

Freedom’s Watch spokesman Matt David, however tells me the group was charged “significantly more” than MoveOn.org for its ad. The organization says it plans to run a response to the MoveOn.org NYT ad in the Times, “and we plan to demand the same ad rate they paid,” David says.

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