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PJM's Jim Hanson of Blackfive explains why he filed a complaint with the FEC regarding the New York Times' decision to give MoveOn.Org a huge discount on their now-infamous ad attacking General Petraeus.

by Jim Hanson

I firmly believe that MoveOn.org should have every right to spread their message of defeat and despair as far and wide as possible, even on the pages of the New York Times.

Political speech is a bedrock freedom all Americans enjoy and it should not be abridged. Yet it is one of the few areas which is regulated. There are restrictions on advertising to ensure that media outlets don’t take advantage of their platforms to advance a particular political agenda. This can happen when candidates and issues the paper agrees with are charged one rate for advertising, and those it disagrees with are forced to pay a much higher rate, a situation which would seem fundamentally unfair. This is what occurred when the New York Times gave MoveOn a $65k price for a $186K ad.

The Times is known to have a strong liberal bias, to put it mildly. One Republican official joked: “I’m surprised they had to pay anything at all for the ad. They could have just asked the editorial page to run it and it wouldn’t have cost them a cent.”

But MoveOn.org did run it and got an amazing substantial discount, one that any advertiser would love to receive. When called on it, they came out with an incredible lie. They claimed this discount was because the ad was bought on a ’standby rate.’

I have experience working for Capital Newspapers in Madison, WI, and sold political and advocacy advertising during the 2006 elections and throughout the year. If that ad was actually ’standby,’ it means none of the other commissioned ad reps were able to sell that space for a higher price. Now that may be true in the back of the Classifieds or Home & Garden of a major newspaper, but not in the front section. Selling that ad to MoveOn had to have cost the Times money, because they have any number of top-shelf advertisers and ad reps who would have jumped at even half that discount.

In my job, we were part of Lee Enterprises which owns about 60 papers around the country. Before we could sell one piece of political/advocacy advertising we attended a corporate training session which taught the do’s and dont’s of the trade. The biggest “don’t” of all was “Thou shalt never discount”. It was drilled into us that federal law prohibited lowering our price for any group or candidate so as not to disadvantage others. This simple common sense rule was emphasized, and we were told not just the law but that the paper’s good reputation depended on being seen as an honest broker.

The NY Times doesn’t have much of a reputation left to salvage in terms of objectivity, they are widely seen as an advocate for liberal causes, but in this case they have certainly favored one group over others beyond their editorial pages.

To me, that seems to be a violation of federal election laws, so I did something I hadn’t done before. I petitioned my government for redress of a particular grievance, illegal political advertising.

I filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission regarding the discount given to MoveOn.

I have done this not because I believe that any speech should be curbed, but only because the Times was cheating to favor a group of ideological fellow travelers. Personally I don’t believe the government should have the ability to limit any political speech, and feel that McCain-Feingold is unconstitutional. But we have to live with existing laws and this means the Times has a responsibility to either act fairly or do the honest thing and register as an advocacy group themselves. Maybe this event will spur a little actual reform, like the government staying out of our ability to debate issues in public. At a minimum it exposes the Times as a propaganda organ. Here is my complaint. I can’t say for certain if they broke any laws, but I think what they did was wrong.

Office of General Counsel

Federal Election Commission

999 E Street, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20463

Dear Folks,

Sept. 10, 2007 the political advocacy group MoveOn.org ran an ad in the NY Times with the headline, Gen. Petraeus or Gen. Betray Us.

This ad also says “Cooking the books for the White House” making it political communications and subject to FEC regulations. It has been reported that MoveOn paid $65,000 for the ad by ABC News and the NY Post

The rate card price of such an ad on the NY Times political advocacy rate card is $181,692.

I sold political advertising for Capital Newspapers in Madison, WI during the 2006 elections. We were informed that there could be absolutely no discounts to the rate card prices for political or advocacy advertising based on federal law. The reason was self-evidently to stop the paper from favoring one viewpoint over another. It seems evident that if the reports are true, the NY Times has favored MoveOn by offering a huge discount to them for political advocacy advertising.

I request an investigation to determine if the law has been broken by the NY Times and/or MoveOn.org.

Complainant:

James Hanson

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Madison, WI 53703

XXXXXXXXXXXX

jimbo AT unclejimbo.com

Respondents:

MoveOn.org

New York Times

Cordially,

Jim

Jim Hanson writes for the military blog Blackfive.net on national security issues.

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