Advertising policies at student newspapers: paid journalism, free speech, or what?

[This was written to be an editorial for a journalism class, but I don’t think I picked it to turn in. It reads like a thought process.]

Or: what offends more, the ads, the ad policies, or the advice from professionals?

by Benjamin Melançon

Despite their long union, news and opinion do not mix well with advertising. Where payment serves as the primary entry barrier for what gets into the paper, an intelligent policy on the secondary determinants is hard to come up with. Yet when some student-run college newspapers apologized after the fact for runnning a vituperative anti-reparations ad by David Horowitz, a gaggle of media figures began to passionately inform these papers what their ad policy should be.

Washington Post columnist Jonathan Yardley seemed to imply that Journalism 101 teaches that buying space to preach a viewpoint is fair, that the protections of the First Amendment apply to paid expression, and that what the college paper editors did "deserves no sympathy at all." One can appreciate Yardley's firmness of belief in the absolutes of advertisement policy, but one can hardly blame college editors if they wonder why they've never seen an ad like Horowitz's in the Post. It is unclear if Yardley's last two points taken together mean that he thinks refusing to run the ad violates the First Amendment.

In fact, newspapers have no legal, let alone Constitutional, requirement to accept ads. Nor should a single organization bear the burden of free speech. On the other hand, newspapers generally commit themselves morally to the interchange of ideas. This commitment borders on an obligation to freedom of speech, especially since a college paper may seem the only source of news for students and out in the 'real world' many towns and even cities have only one newspaper. True solutions include greater equality of wealth so that the means of expressing oneself and spreading ones ideas are more available to all, more newspapers, and less concentrated ownership of newspapers. At the University of Wisconsin in Madison, the Daily Cardinal refused to print Horowitz's ad but the Badger Herald published it with relish— and then the Cardinal printed a response to the ad which the Herald said would be "improper to publish"! Free speech problem solved, one way or another. However, particularly in the absence of competition, newspapers have a responsibility to provide a forum for a diversity of opinions— but in the advertisements? 'Your speech will not be restricted, so long as you pay for it.'

Not that this lofty ideal has been reached at any newspaper. The college papers that simply refused to run the anti-reparations ad, rather than printing it by accident and then apologizing, have faced no condemnation (though they, of course, are the successful 'abridgers of free speech'). Although the numerous critics have not expressed it, perhaps what really upsets people about apologizing for running the ad is the strong implication that newspaper readers have a right not to be exposed to ideas they don't like.

Even making this assumption, the extent to which apologizing for running the ad is decried as "downright unjournalistic" by those in the news business is a little disturbing. What should an ad policy be? Can the professionals offer the students no guidance? Joan Walsh of Salon.com comes the closest: "It's probably worth noting that most media outlets reserve the right to reject controversial ads, and regularly do. But it's also worth noting that Horowitz's anti-reparations position is thoroughly mainstream." Which it is. Horowitz's snide asides – for example, "some blacks can't seem to locate the ladder of opportunity within reach of others" – are also mainstream. Can Walsh really mean that refusing to print a mainstream opinion is reprehensible, while refusing to print an unpopular opinion is just business as usual, and that rejecting an ad expressing a popular sentiment is the great crime for which she and others villify the student editors? Then what is all this talk about free speech? And what kind of ad policy should a newspaper have?

In a non-advertisement opinion piece primary critera should be adding something new to the discussion and clarity of expression. But in an ad? If a newspaper screens (or doesn't screen) its ads for the benefit of the reader, as implied by the uproar over journalistic standards in connection to not running the Horowitz ad, is editorial judgement of advertisements part of the value of the product sold to readers? If this is the case, it brings up some disturbing questions, such as 'Does the New York Times see value in mostly naked women in fur coats?'

If ads are to be part of the journalistic creation that is a newspaper, perhaps a sliding scale ought to be used to deal with the problem of bought content:

"This is of no value to our readers and will probably annoy them. $5,000." These articles are known today as advertising. The better, more useful that an advertisement was, the less it would cost to get in the paper.
"This is important for readers, we'll print it for free."
"This is a terrific! We'll pay you!" These are called today news and opinion articles, although the pay is usually given more grudgingly.

At the bottom of the article-advertisement would be how much the newspaper paid or was paid to print it, so the reader would know the newspaper's judgement of the article-advertisement's worth.

This whacky scheme stands little chance of being adopted. Most journalists seem to prefer the old-fashioned wall of separation between reporting and advertising.

In this sense a morally defensible policy is to declare advertising space a bastion of (paid for) 'free speech' where the newspaper will undertake little review and impose almost no restrictions. 'The ads are not part of our content; they are merely paid space which subsidizes the cost of producing the newspaper.' If readers accept a newspaper's abdication of responsibility for choosing advertisements for 'inoffensive' content, this could help the newspaper fulfill its real obligation to the free interchange of ideas— on the news and opinion pages. If any viewpoint can make it as an ad, reader resistance to the expression of unpopular ideas in the rest of the paper may be lessened.

In the end, the most important thing about an ad policy is to have one. The next most important thing is to make it public. Ad acceptance and rejection decisions cannot be justified without a publicized policy on advertisements.

Anything beyond asserting the need for a public ad policy is merely idle advice, but here are a few suggestions anyway:

Unless you're willing to devote substantial resources to evaluating and fact-checking advertisements, perhaps even applying a sliding scale of 'added-value,' don't claim to apply journalistic principles such as clarity or accuracy to advertisements— and don't suggest that the advertisements have value to the reader either.
To the extent possible, do not weed out 'offensive' advertisements. Coddling readers in the advertisements may make it harder to address controversial issues in the news and opinion sections.
One approach might be to take the First Amendment, and add on standards of 'decency' necessary in a family newspaper.

In a newspaper with an ad policy that respected its readers, Horowitz might be in and those mostly naked people out.

[And a newspaper that truly served its readers would print news and analysis about what mattered most in their lives, and not accept ads at all.]

Return to Opinion.

[Associated fragmentary thoughts; read at own risk.]

The disturbing thing in the newspaper-advertiser relationship is not the newspaper's policies on ads, but the advertisers' policies on news.

Would you feel comfortable buying a car heavily subsidized by your local department store, the cinema,

'Dear David Horowitz: We are delighted to have recieved you ad, but we have decided that we would like to run an article making the case for reparations before we publish one that says how dangerous this idea is. If you know anyone who has such an article and will pay our newspaper to run it, please put them in contact with us.'

The idea that a newspaper has an obligation to show ads

First Amendment

we aren't filtering it for your benefit, it just supports our paper

Don't run it, fine, but apologize for it?

This is bizarre, as the calumny does not surround the majority of newspapers that rejected the ad. 'you have a right not to see something in print'

Newspapers have no legal requirement to accept ads, and it would be a little disturbing if they did.

[Intellectual Property Rights Editorial REWRITE for Howard Ziff’s 2001 Spring Editorial and Column Writing class.]

Return to Opinion.