Last week, The Free Press ran an advertising supplement titled “Think Outside the Box.” This 12-page glossy insert is a long treatise against abortion and a few connected issues like contraception and sex before marriage. While I appreciate the objections of many of our readers, I have to defend our advertisers’ right to do business with us.
The Free Press’s advertising policy states, in part: “The Free Press reserves the right to reject advertising, including that which the Executive Board considers untruthful, offensive, misleading or deceptive.” On these grounds, the insert passes muster. One can argue that the ad is excessive and one-sided, but that doesn’t make it offensive. Unless it encourages violence or hate it’s protected by the First Amendment and, while I’m Editor, my personal conviction that people should be allowed to say what they like, even if it’s unpleasant.
The insert isn’t “deceptive” or “misleading” in the way our policy uses those terms. “Think Outside the Box” does a very good job of identifying itself as an advertisement. The words “Advertising Supplement” appear prominently on every page of the insert. If a reader interprets the contents of “Think Outside the Box” as being endorsed by The Free Press, they are missing the basic conventions of print journalism. We never endorse the contents of any of our advertising.
We’ve run issue advertising before. MoveOn.org, a political activism group, ran an ad in several issues leading up to last year’s election. Their ad, titled “Are you feeling a draft?” includes the text “Iraq is a quagmire that’s only going to get worse.” Like “Think Outside the Box,” this is an issue ad that doesn’t promote any products – only a political sentiment. We also printed a Planned Parenthood ad last week advertising birth control. That’s not an issue ad, but it does contradict the anti-contraceptive sentiments in “Think Outside the Box.” The Free Press doesn’t endorse any of these ads. We just sell the space.
This insert was placed by 360 Youth, a national company that sells most of our national ads, like the Geico, Ebay and U.S. Cellular ads. They don’t show us previews of most of their inserts, and that’s usually no problem. When they want to run a potentially divisive insert like “Think Outside the Box,” they first send a copy for our review. On the strength of this preview, at least one previous editor has declined to print “Think Outside the Box” before. This year, I never saw a preview of the insert. Our Advertising Manager saw an insertion order that showed the size of the insert and the client’s name: “Human Life Alliance.” None of this was specific enough to raise any concerns. For whatever reason, we never got to see the ad before it ran. So, from now on we’re going to require our advertisers provide previews of their insertions before we run them.
Given the chance to preview the insert, we probably would have run it anyway. I would have explained our decision in the same issue, though. I want our readers to know we are sensitive to their values, and I realize a large part of our audience have been offended by the insert. If there are any further questions about the insert, please call me at 780-4084 x1 or email me at [email protected].