The Janjaweeds Are So Beautiful This Time of Year
From Lloyd Grove:
Human-rights activists are scorching The New York Times for taking almost a million dollars in advertising from the blood-soaked country of Sudan, whose leaders ... promote slavery and genocide on a grand scale.
"I practically fell off my seat on the subway this morning. I could not believe it," Human Rights Watch program director Iain Levine told me about the eight-page advertising supplement, for which The Times charged the Sudanese an estimated $929,000 for yesterday's New York-area editions.
The ad copy -- by international image consultants Summit Communications -- touts Sudan's "peaceful, prosperous and democratic future" and complains about international media coverage "focused almost exclusively on the fighting between rebels and Arab militias" in Darfur...
Times spokeswoman Catherine J. Mathis said: "We accepted this special advertising section ... in our strong belief that all pages of the paper -- news, editorial and advertising -- must remain open to the free flow of ideas. In accepting it, we do not endorse the politics, trade practices or actions of the country or the character of its leaders."
Hmmm....free speech? How 'bout free money?
(Image via IPI Global Journalist)
Technorati tags: Advertising, PR, Public Relations, Marketing
posted by Scott Baradell at
10:51 AM
3 Comments:
Let's see what the NYT does if, just for the sake of argument, one later proves that the ad money came from the black-market sale of international relief supplies.
By
Ike, at 3/22/2006
This shouldn't surprise anyone. Neither moral nor intellectual consistency are strongpoints for the Times. I wrote another post on this...and the editorial at beltwayblitz.eponym.com.
By
Anonymous, at 3/22/2006
I actually like intellectual inconsistency -- as long as it includes an intellectual part. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, after all. I recall doing a story years back on Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, where students were taught to consistently defend their world view -- but not to think.
By
SB, at 3/22/2006
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