Respectfully submitted by Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
I am sure you have all seen the comments and political advertisements and articles calling President Obama a Communist, a Socialist, a Kenyan citizen and various attempts to claim that he is a secret Muslim. I had thought I had seen them all when I came across the latest affront to reality. A Gannet newspaper in Louisiana has agreed to run an “interesting” advertisement from an organization calling itself the SOAR Project. SOAR stands for Save Our American Republic.
In my humble opinion, this advertisement goes far beyond any level of reasonableness when it leads with the question, “Will Obama and the Democrats Shoot Catholics and Christians “?
The Gannet Advertiser has approved the advertisement that tries to claim that Obama will shoot Catholics just like the Mexican Government killed a Catholic priest in 1927! I am all for almost unlimited free speech and that includes garbage like this ad, but I am curious if the Gannet Advertiser would approve an advertisement that makes the ridiculous claim that Mitt Romney will hang all African Americans if elected, as suggested by one of the commenters on the Think Progress site?
“The ad shows a photograph of a Catholic priest who was shot and killed in Mexico in the 1920s, and suggests that President Obama and Democrats would do the same evil deed. It was posted by a user on Reddit this morning. The ad copy is no better:
“AMERICA is under siege by the same evil (obama and democrats) as history shows over and over…We must learn from it or we are doomed to repeat it. We must be triumphant over terror.”
As with most newspapers, The Daily Advertiser says it does screen advertisements to ensure that blatantly false, overly offensive or otherwise inappropriate content is kept out of the paper. But the paper’s president and publisher Karen J. Lincoln told ThinkProgress that the newspaper stood by its decision to run the ad. “We look at all of the ads, and the decision is made by each market,” she said. “This ad did meet our standards. The decision to run it was approved.” Lincoln also says that another ad from the same organization will run in tomorrow’s paper.” Think Progress
While this SOAR organization has the right to spew as much hate and lies as it wants, the amazing part is that the Daily Advertiser claimed that this garbage actually meets their “standards”! If this advertisement meets the paper’s standards, then the door should be wide open for any lie and disparaging advertisement to be run by that very same newspaper. If this ad meets the standards, is there any advertisement that won’t be accepted by the Daily Advertiser?
I searched the website for this newspaper and I found nothing that discusses just what are its standards for advertisements. The Advertiser Maybe you will have better luck than me in finding out just what standards The Advertiser uses to review proposed advertisements. Can you think of any advertisement that would not be accepted under these allegedly loose standards?
Can or should anything be done to prevent this kind of hate filled lies to be published by any newspaper? Does this kind of brutally false claim amount to actual malice and therefore allow Obama to sue the paper and/or the organization paying for the advertisement for defamation? Let’s hear your thoughts and ideas!
Additional Sources: Miami Herald Publishing Co. V. Tornillo; New York Times v. Sullivan
What are you talking about Mike!?
Quit projecting your bullshit onto me.
My point was plain as day.
The Daily Advertiser circulation: 45,000
Think Progress Circulation: 300,000
Even Jonathan Turley’s blog, basically the hobby blog of a Professor and hardly comparable to a Gannett Newspaper has a circulation of 3,000 every day, or as much as 1/15th that of the Daily Advertiser.
Hence the Daily Advertiser is a huge bucket of FAIL and this shitty foul advertisement is being seen by precisely nobody and is not really a problem worthy of rafflaw’s attention (sincerely meant).
It’s mainly a Daily Poutrage blast from Think Progress meant to generate clicks and sell their ads.
“That is sad for you since the general opinion of you here is that you are of little importance, except as an example of bitter misogyny.”
Once more you have that problem as always of being able to call names but being unable to point out actual examples of misogny that were not parodies of others in the thread.
Come on Mike, you’re often better than this.
P.S. I think puzzling makes a good point re: the Ryan ad.
Free speech is free speech.
And I don’t care if it is Joseph Goebbels who uses it.
We’ll get him for war crimes—–when do we start trying our own ones?
This is just pandering to their own advertizers and redneck supporters.
Any sound person would say, consider the argument and the source. Both fail the test. The more rabid the more self-defeating.
As long as a lynch gang is not started, but that’s a crime.
“Jonathanturley.org’s three-month global Alexa traffic rank is #148,985.”
Anon,
the fact that you keep commenting on such an “unworthy” blog must mean that it holds some importance for you, even if that importance is negative. That is sad for you since the general opinion of you here is that you are of little importance, except as an example of bitter misogyny.
“AMERICA is under siege by the same evil (obama and democrats) as history shows over and over…We must learn from it or we are doomed to repeat it. We must be triumphant over terror.”
The Ad is offensively wrong, but if the quote above is the tenor of the ad then it is merely expressing an opinion. As such I don’t think there should be a cause of action.
@puzzling, I hope you will sign my petition asking YouTube to stop giving away the punchlines.
Jonathanturley.org’s three-month global Alexa traffic rank is #148,985. It reaches roughly 2,929 unique users each day. Visitors to it view 1.23 unique pages each day on average. Estimated daily time on site 01:58 seconds. It has an average of 8,090 pages indexed in major search engines like Google™. There are an average of 1,674 links pointing back to jonathanturley.org from other websites.
Jonathanturley.org has the potential to earn $59 USD in advertisement revenue per day. It has an estimated value of $21,089 USD. Out of the 30 unique keywords found on jonathanturley.org, “res ipsa loquitur” was the most dense “gene you stupid slut” the funniest.
obviously, Gannett doesn’t have very high standards. The best recourse is for them to see letters to the editor that excoriate them. Of course, they aren’t likely to print them, but still they would know what their readers think.
bigfatmike:
you are genius.
Question: How many people visit Think Progress blog website per month?
Answer: Think Progress blog website has approximately 339,200 unique visitors each month.
The Daily Advertiser (Lafayette)
The Daily Advertiser is a Gannett daily newspaper based in Lafayette, the fourth largest city in Louisiana. The Daily Advertiser covers international, national, state, and local news in the six parishes of Lafayette, Acadia, Iberia, St. Landry, St. Martin, and Vermilion. The publication circulates 45,400 copies on weekdays. Its ranks 234 out of 1,410 newspapers in the United States. The circulation area is approximately 27 percent nonwhite; the nonwhite employees of the newspaper totaled approximately 17 percent in 2005.[1]
Louisiana journalist Robert Angers (1919-1988) worked at times for the Daily Advertiser, including his ultimate position as business editor from 1985 until his death. In 1968, he founded Acadiana Profile magazine in Lafayette and from 1950-1965 edited and published the Franklin Banner-Tribune in Franklin, the seat of St. Mary Parish.[2]
An ad suggesting that Obama would kill citizens? Fear-mongering propaganda.
An ad suggesting Ryan would kill? Truth to power.
Jason,
Actually, it doesn’t matter since conservative lobbyists effectively dismantled the Fairness Doctrine during 1987-1989 by manipulating the then Chairman of the FCC Mark Fowler who used administrative measures to kill the doctrine. Congress later tried to revive to doctrine saying that Fowler was attempting to thwart the will of Congress, but Bush I vetoed the bill.
I try and limit my poutrage — too sugary.
Joseph Goebbels rolls in his grave and gives the The Daily Advertiser and Karen J. Lincoln a big thumbs up.
Roger-
Fox News is on cable, not the airwaves. They are not subject to the same scrutiny that ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox are.
I think outright lies, even implied as a question, in political speech really push hard at the principle of free speech.
About the only thing that I can think of worse than lies in political speech is setting up the government as arbiter of the dividing line between truth and a lie.
On balance I think my judgment would be to keep the government out of it and leave it to citizens to figure out who the lier is.
The “freedom to lie” is not equal to the freedom from accountability:
http://contusio-cordis.blogspot.no/2010/11/freedom-of-speech-clarification.html
Roger,
Doesn’t the First Amendment apply to both print and online material?
A newspaper does not use the commons, at least for its print version. Their editorial policies are their own. Whether or not they are guilty of libel is a separate issue.
That said, I have a different opinion about their online edition, which uses the public infrastructure of the internet. The press has responsibilities for the public good in a functioning democracy, and there might be a breach of contract or charter involved here?
For example, it is my relatively uninformed opinion that Fox News, which deliberately broadcasts false propaganda over public infrastructure has broken the charter for use of the public airwaves, which demands that news organizations operate for the public good. I believe the government has the right and duty to take them off the air.
I don’t know if this concept of charter responsibilities holds for the internet. I am not a lawyer, but I wonder what sort of case can be made along these lines.
I read on the Turley blog a year or more ago that some wacko lawyer sued Jimmy Carter (but may not have actually served the summons and complaint against him) for saying in his own book that he was telling the truth. Can’t remember the guy’s name. I think it was pointed out on this blog that the purpose of the lawsuit was to “chill” other people who might think of publishing something that could lead to an expensive lawsuit. Well, maybe there are good reasons to have lots of lawyers competing for good work to do. Whereas it is not a per se slander to say that somebody was born in Kenya, it might be a slander to say that they defrauded the American people by pretending to have been born in Hawaii, or the like.