NEW YORK (Reuters) - The New York Times said on Sunday it made a mistake in charging a discounted rate for printing a political ad that attacked the top U.S. general in Iraq, angering Republicans and drawing charges the newspaper is politically biased. Given the mistake, Moveon.org, the liberal anti-war group that purchased the ad on September 10 -- the day Gen. David Petraeus testified to Congress about the war in Iraq -- said on Sunday it was willing to pay the full price.
Oh, that'll help immensely. Not.
The ad, headlined "General Petraeus or General Betray Us," accused Petraeus of "cooking the books for the White House."
The New York Times' public editor Clark Hoyt wrote that in his opinion, not only did the advertiser get a discount it was not entitled to, but the ad violated The Times' own written standards.
Written? Who cares about written? I care about practice.
"The ad
Must have read one of the emails.
He quoted Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis as saying the advertising representative who sold the ad failed to make it clear that for the standby rate of $65,000, The Times could not guarantee it would run it on the day of Petraeus' testimony.
Avoidance of Responsibility 101, Tried and Proven Technique #4: Blame flunkie, fire/bribe flunkie. Make no mention that flunkie had little to do with it and probably would have made a better decision had they actually been the one in charge. And I'm quite sure that the entire chain of "management" knew that ad was coming and what day it was to appear in the paper. The editors verify that the correct spin has been applied to almost everything else, why stop at the ads?
That standby rate is offered to political and advocacy groups willing to be flexible about the day their ads run.
Thought they'd both have their cake and eat it too, eh?
"We made a mistake," Mathis was quoted as saying.
"We", meaning the flunkie, of course.
Moveon.org said that it would wire the difference between the standby rate and the full rate of $142,083 to The Times.
Good news/bad news. MoveOn loses $$$, NYT gains.
"Now that the Times has revealed this mistake for the first time, and while we believe that the $142,083 figure is above the market rate paid by most organizations, out of an abundance of caution we have decided to pay that rate for this ad," it said in statement.
Took them this long to figure out what happened? Or this long to cook the books until it was good enough for public scrutiny?