MRC's Bozell Slams NYT's MoveOn.org 'Betray Us' Ad Discount

By NB Staff (Bio | Archive)
September 13, 2007 - 09:39 ET

Appearing on the September 13 edition of "Fox News Live," MRC president and NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell questioned the deep 60 percent discount that liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org received for its infamous "Betray Us" ad attacking the honor of Gen. David Petraeus.

Bozell noted that "unless the New York Times can explain itself away and show how this was some incredible coincidence" that the paper is in effect "a co-sponsor of that despicable ad."

Video (2:10): Real and Windows, plus MP3 audio.

Below is a transcript of the interview:

BRENT BOZELL, President of the Media Research Center: Well, let's start from this standpoint. I think that the ad, and most Americans believe, this ad was a despicable attack on the honor of an American military commander who's leading our men and women in a very brave struggle in Iraq. That said the New York Times should have and could have rejected this ad in toto. Now, as to the discount, one can get discounts, but we don't have time to explain how the industry works. But to simplify it, if you get a discount, you surrender one of two things. Either the placement spot in the newspaper or the time. In other words, it runs whenever there's an opening. For this ad to have run in the top spot in the newspaper to run on the exact morning that MoveOn.org needed it to run and then for them to get on top of that a 60 percent discount, it makes it very, very suspicious. This looks to be an in-kind contribution."

BILL HEMMER, host, "Fox News Live": An income [sic] contribution, what is that?

BOZELL: What I'm saying is that unless the New York Times can explain this one away, and by the way, the New York Times has a rich history of doing this kind of anti-war thing in the last three years. Whether it's running doctored pictures, whether it's breaking state secrets, it's doing all sorts of stuff to disrupt this war.

HEMMER: Well, it wasn't as if MoveOn.org was going to walk away and place the ad somewhere else. I mean, the group's got plenty of money, right?

BOZELL: Oh, sure. But you know if you're the New York Times, with an ad like this, first you should not have run it. Secondly, if you did choose to run it, what you should have done is make them pay full price for it the way a conservative would have to pay full price for an ad.

HEMMER: So the fact that that did not happen, does that make the Times complicit in the message in that ad, Brent?

BOZELL: I'm saying unless the New York Times can explain itself away and show how this was some incredible coincidence, the New York Times as far as I'm concerned is a co-sponsor of that despicable ad.

HEMMER: Brent Bozell, thank you for your time. From Washington and the Media Research Center. We'll speak again. Thank you, Brent.


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NYT

September 13, 2007 - 09:55 ET by Felicity Rand

NYT has clear financial difficulties-- changed the format, layed off workers, etc. to supposedly cut the budget.  Then they give a $100,000 discount to a group with money but, hey, the paper supports their cause.  The paper is truly suicidal.

As a test, a conservative group needs to put together an ad showing their support of the troops, then try to buy space in the NYT.  Offer to pay full price.  Make it known to other news outlets you are doing this.  Let's embarrass them more.   

Brent, your to nice. Call

September 13, 2007 - 09:59 ET by bassndude

Brent, your to nice. Call em for the traitors they are. Carry a rope onto the set, tied in a hangmans knot.

Save a SeAL, club a liberal!!

Plain old character assassination.

September 13, 2007 - 10:23 ET by CT

The NYT and MoveOn are willing surrogates for the Democratic Party engaged in plain old character assassination or in the current vernacular the politics of personal destruction..

In-Kind Contributions

September 13, 2007 - 11:03 ET by nofate

"...This looks to be an in-kind contribution."  Absolutely.

In-Kind Contribution:

 

The Bob Casey for Pennsylvania Committee (the "Casey Committee"), the authorized committee of Bob Casey, a candidate for election to the United States Senate from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, requested an Advisory Opinion addressing whether it would be a prohibited in-kind corporate contribution under the Federal Election Campaign Act ("FECA") for a television station to sell advertising time to the Casey Committee at the Lowest Unit Charge ("LUC"),1 if the Casey Committee was not "entitled" to receive the LUC under section 315 of the Communications Act, 47 U.S.C. 315(b).

Following the Commission’s longstanding precedent for analyzing discounts offered to Federal candidates, we concluded that providing the LUC to the Casey Committee in these circumstances would be a prohibited in-kind corporate contribution, unless the LUC was provided to the Casey Committee as a discount offered in the ordinary course of the television station’s business on the same terms and conditions offered to the station’s non-candidate customers. If the LUC was provided as a discount in the ordinary course of business, the LUC would not be an in-kind contribution, even in an instance in which a committee such as the Casey Committee was not "entitled" to the LUC under the Communications Act.

That is just one example of what popped up when I searched for "in-kind contribution".  I am no lawyer, but I am sure they have a ton of high powered lawyers that will get them off the hook on this.  This is nothing new for the NYT, it has been going on at least as far back as the days of Walter Duranty purposely refusing to report on the Stalin purges in Ukraine in the 1930's.  Disgraceful, as usual.

"The future is not set.  There is no fate but what we make for ourselves."

http://www.michaelyon-online.com

Federal Election Campaign Act ("FECA")

September 13, 2007 - 15:07 ET by Hoosier Daddy

I think it is actually Federal Election Campaign Act LAW("FECAL").

 

Evolutionists have heard of Darwin; Creationists understand Darwin.

Smells like something else.

September 13, 2007 - 16:09 ET by CT

It's just FECES to the Moonbats!

Smells like FECAL

September 14, 2007 - 06:10 ET by nofate

I vote for FECAL.  I've worked >25 yrs. on the clinical side of large hospitals and this smells.  I know fecal material when I see it or smell it. 

 

"The future is not set.  There is no fate but what we make for ourselves."

http://www.michaelyon-online.com

MoveOn made a move that

September 13, 2007 - 14:12 ET by daveinboca

MoveOn made a move that really bent the
tracks for the Democratic Express which was chugging along in an elaborate prequel
trying to undermine Petraeus's credibility when the over-the-top ad
appeared.

The specious spurious MoveOn guttersnipers gave the lie to any
Democratic claims to objective analysis. The subsequent cowardice of
Clinton and the seven dwarfs [or however many] reveals the craven
appeasement Dems make toward ultra-left bloggers.

Do the Dems believe that the country doesn't note their abject submission to blackmail by MoveOn, who overtly tells them that
if they condemn the ad, they will be punished by guttersnipe bloggers
in Soros-cide squads?

These things get out, and the more the MSM like the NYT tries to
cover up their discounting the MoveOn ad and other complicity with this
outrageous slander of an honorable man, the more the American people
will realize that the Mighty Wurlitzer of the left MSM does not have
the interests of the USA first and foremost.