LITTLE ROCK — The Joyce Elliott campaign for Arkansas’ 2nd District U.S House seat is asking whether the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette “says ‘No’ to humor, truth and free speech?” as the campaign complained that the newspaper declined to publish an ad the campaign offered last week for the newspaper’s Sunday editions.
The campaign also complained that it was given no reason for the rejection.
Officials at the newspaper declined in interviews to say why the ad was rejected, but mentioned that the newspaper found that some articles on which some claims in the ad were based did not say what the ad depicted them as saying.
Some critics of the newspaper had suggested the ad was rejected because the opinion section of the newspaper has endorsed Tim Griffin of Little Rock, the Republican nominee, over Elliott, a Democrat, in the central Arkansas congressional race. The newspaper has a long-standing policy of keeping the news department’s operations and the opinion section’s operations independent of each other.
After the Elliott campaign submitted the proposed ad, the newspaper’s advertising department asked the news department to verify the five footnoted citations in it.
One was to a Democrat-Gazette news story dated July 10, 1998. Another was to an opinion column dated Sept. 13, 1998, by John Brummett, then employed on the Democrat-Gazette’s editorial page staff. Two citations were to other publications and the fifth was attributed to Griffin’s “2009 personal finance disclosure.”
Griffin Smith, the newspaper’s executive editor, said he liked the proposed ad and tried to find some way to encourage its use. He also said it was “unfair, but enjoyable” and “well-drawn.”
“It reminded me of those great political cartoons we used to see back in the 1950s, when every day you couldn’t wait to see the newspaper to see what was coming next,” Smith said. “I loved it.”
The proposed ad portrayed candidate Griffin as a slanderer, a deceiver, a person who made political phone calls attaxpayers’ expense as well other bad things, including having a concern only about his own job rather than the jobs of Arkansans.
But Smith concluded that the Democrat-Gazette story and opinion column cited by the ad did not support the ad’s claims.
“They were bogus citations,” Smith said.
“That was the last connection I had to the situation,”Smith said, adding that he didn’t know what explanation the ad department had for rejecting the ad.
Smith’s findings and his copies of the cited article and column were sent to the ad department.
Nat Lea, vice president and general manager of the Democrat-Gazette’s Little Rockbased editions that circulate in 63 counties, said he conferred with the newspaper’s advertising director, John Mobbs, and they agreed that the column and article “did not support the assertions for which they were cited.”
After they spoke, Lea said, the director’s assistant, Tori Wallace, conveyed to the Elliott campaign in an e-mail the news that the ad’s content couldn’t be accepted in that form.
Her e-mail to campaign contact person John S. Whiteside said: “I tried calling you back, but got your voicemail. In response to your inquiry ... I cannot tell you what is wrong with the ad; only that we cannot accept the ad in its present form. If you would like to revise and resubmit the ad for approval, please feel free to do so.
“Also, please give me a call or reply within the hour to let me know what you decide; otherwise, I will inform our layout coordinator that you will no longer need the quarter page space that has been reserved for your advertisement.
“If you have any further questions and need immediate attention, please do not hesitate to give me a call.”
On Monday, ad department employees said in interviews that on the advice of lawyersthe department never states reasons why ads are rejected, leaving it to those who submit ads to adjust a proposed ad’s content and offer a new version that might prove publishable.
Lea said it “is the newspaper’s policy not to rewrite political ads” no matter whosecampaign submits them.
Told Monday by a reporter that the problem seemed to be an inconsistency between what the articles said and what the ad portrayed them as saying, Whiteside said, “It would have helped if we had been told that. We could have done something.”
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 11 on 10/27/2010