New York
Post:
- The New York Times dramatically slashed its normal rates for a full-page advertisement for MoveOn.org's ad questioning the integrity of Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq.
A spokesman for MoveOn.org confirmed to The Post that the liberal activist group had paid only $65,000 for the ad. . . .
A Post reporter who called the Times advertising department yesterday without identifying himself was quoted a price of $167,000 for a full-page black-and-white ad on a Monday.
[Times PR director Abbe] Serphos declined to confirm the price and refused to offer any inkling for why the paper would give MoveOn.org such a discounted price.
The Times advertising rate card (see page 5) lists a full-page weekday political ad as costing $
167,000 and change.
According to the
Federal Elections Commission's Campaign Guide for Corporations and Labor Organizations, this discount might have been an "in kind" political donation:
- Services (such as advertising, printing or consulting) are valued at the prevailing commercial rate at the time the services are rendered (i.e., the amount that was paid or would have been paid for the services).
- Discounts are valued at the amount discounted (i.e., the difference between the usual and normal charge and the amount paid by the committee).
Corporate contributions to PACs are illegal under the campaign finance laws the Times itself has long championed: "Corporations and labor organizations are prohibited from making contributions in connection with federal elections," according to the FEC. (A corporation may set up and administer a "separate segregated fund," or a corporate PAC, which receives contributions from people associated with the company, but it may not contribute to its own SSF or any other federally registered PAC.)
You would think that, after MoveOn.org and similar groups on the right were forced to pay big fines for violating campaign finance laws, that the New York Times would be more careful about this sort of thing.
Granted, there may be an explanation here that does not implicate campaign finance laws. Perhaps the "prevailing commercial rate" for an ad in the Times is lower than that in the rate card
; maybe such deep "discounts" are routine and thus not really discounts for the FEC's purposes
.
However, for what it's worth, the American
Spectator allegeds that the Times doesn't have an across the board, non-partisan, policy about this sort of thing:
- The New York Times in the past has rejected "advocacy" ads from Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, as well as from the National Right to Life Committee, despite the fact that both would have qualified for the same "special advocacy, stand by" rates that the radical, left-wing organization MoveOn.org was given for its smear ad of Gen. David Petraeus.
In any event, I can see why the Times spokesmen are not eager to discuss this matter.
