Why Not Do It For Free?
There's been some controversy over how The New York Times published MoveOn.org's anti-Petraeus ad at a cut rate. Some even claim heavy discounts for one political side breaks campaign finance laws.
Who cares? Newspapers are exempt from campaign finance rules because if they weren't it would make the destruction of First Amendment rights too obvious. The Times, if it wishes, can make every page, every day, nothing but anti-Petraeus editorials. It's silly that it can't decide for its own purposes how much political speech to allow other groups that it agrees or disagrees with.
posted by LAGuy @ 2:07 AM
2 Comments:
Absolutely The NYT is free to take any line that it wants & the law should stay out of it. However if it wishes to retain its reputation for being the finest objective news source in the world, it can't do things that create the appearance of partisanship (though I'm guessing most people offended by the Petraeus ad wrote off the NYT long ago), otherwise its sets itself as just a counterweight to FOX News. Newspapers/media lose a great deal of authority by going partisan or being perceived to have done so
MoveOn.org is expert at distracting people from the real issues by giving Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly something superficial to rage about. In this case, the NYTimes foolishly joined in.
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