What’s OK? : Newspapers Draw Foggy Line on Ads

Most American newspapers routinely publish editorials warning about the perils of tobacco and firearms and the abuse of alcohol. But they accept advertising for all three.

Most American newspapers routinely publish editorials expressing concern about the spread of teen-age pregnancy and AIDS. But they refuse to publish advertisements for condoms.

Most American newspapers routinely publish editorials condemning censorship in any form. But they regularly impose specific restrictions on the size, content, language and illustrations of advertising in their pages, especially advertising for X-rated movies and other violent and sexually oriented films.

More than 300 of the nation’s 1,700 daily newspapers now have formal prohibitions against advertising various products and services. Alan Dant, advertising director for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, estimates that his paper loses about $500,000 a year in advertising revenue because of its prohibitions on ads for fortune tellers, escort services and handguns (except antiques).

But Times interviews with advertising executives, editors and publishers--and a Times examination of official advertising regulations--at more than 50 newspapers, large and small, across the country shows that there is little uniformity to these prohibitions or to the policies they represent.

More than 50 newspapers and magazines and a growing number of television stations have recently lifted their bans on condom advertising, for example, and many others are discussing doing so in response to the U.S. surgeon general’s statement that condoms are “the best protection against (AIDS) infection right now, barring abstinence.”

Most Still Refuse

Some newspapers--like the Los Angeles Times--which have not prohibited condom advertising but which say they have not been asked to publish any, are now aggressively seeking it. But most newspapers, many magazines and all three television networks still refuse condom advertising, and some media will accept such ads only if they refer to condoms exclusively as a deterrent to AIDS, not as a birth-control device.

Indeed, a new CBS series of public service announcements on AIDS prevention doesn’t even mention condoms, despite the surgeon general’s testimony before a congressional subcommittee last week that condom ads on television “would have a positive public health benefit.”

The New York Times--like most newspapers--has long refused to accept ads for condoms or for any other contraceptives, even though the New York Times, in 1985, published an editorial urging the networks to meet their “public responsibility” by reconsidering their refusal to broadcast a public service announcement that encouraged the use of contraceptives to prevent unintended pregnancies.

“We . . . felt that ads for these products were inappropriate for the New York Times. . . . We didn’t want those products in the Times,” says Robert Smith, manager of the advertising acceptability department at the paper. “It’s a question of taste . . . and propriety.”

AIDS has forced a partial change in that policy. The New York Times is scheduled to publish its first condom ad in its Sunday magazine March 3. But before accepting the ad, the Times insisted not only that there be no reference to contraception in the ad but also that the original headline for the ad be rewritten.

The original headline on the ad: “I enjoy sex, but I’m not ready to die for it.”

The new headline: “I’ll do a lot for love, but I’m not willing to die for it.”

Different Approaches

Several other publications have also requested the revision that will appear in the New York Times ad; still others have already published the ad with the original headline. Among the latter are USA Today--which, three days after publishing that ad, published an ad that specifically said condoms are “highly effective against pregnancy (when properly used).”

USA Today (and several other newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times) also published an ad from the Planned Parenthood Federation of America that criticized network television for refusing contraceptive advertising; the headline on that ad: “When JR Took Mandy for a Little Roll in the Hay, Which One Had the Condom?”

The New York Times and Washington Post both refused to publish the same ad.

Why are advertising standards so different from newspaper to newspaper? Why are cigarettes advertised in the Kansas City Star but not in the Salina (Kan.) Journal? Why are X-rated movies advertised in the Dallas Morning News but not in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram? Why are ads for handguns not permitted at all in the Boston Globe, permitted in the Chicago Tribune only if the guns are antiques manufactured before 1898, and permitted in the Orlando Sentinel only if the guns are not automatic?

How Do They Decide?

Why does the St. Petersburg Times accept ads for firearms but not for fireworks? Why does the Arizona Republic reject ads for X-rated movies but accept ads for a nightclub named Peeps, which promises “erotic dancers” and “private shows”? Why would the Wall Street Journal accept an ad for Colt Industries but not for a Colt .45?

In short, how do newspapers decide which ads to accept, which to reject and which to require changes in before publication?

The first point most newspaper executives make in any discussion on this subject is that there is not necessarily any correlation between what a newspaper says on its editorial page (or in its news columns) and what it permits advertisers to say in their advertising. Although the publisher is ultimately responsible for all decisions about what appears in a newspaper, editors and advertising executives operate largely independently of each other, maintaining a rigid, church-state separation on almost all but the very smallest papers.

“A newspaper that chooses not to print . . . lawful advertising simply because it editorially disagrees with the thrust of the information is, in my judgment, blinding a community to what is going on in its midst,” says Eugene Patterson, chairman and president of the St. Petersburg Times. “The newspaper has presumed not simply to recommend standards editorially; it has decided it will enforce its predilections on others by censoring reality.”

But this philosophical explanation, although unquestionably legitimate, is only a partial answer. Money is another--some would say larger--part of the answer.

Newspaper advertising is a $27-billion-a-year business. Advertising revenue generally pays for about 75% of the cost of publishing a daily newspaper. It’s not surprising that newspapers want to publish all the advertising they can get--so long as it’s legal, accurate, fair and “within the bounds of good taste as defined by our perception of community standards,” as John Childs, business manager of the Anniston (Ala.) Star, told Tom Goldstein of the University of California, Berkeley, last year, when Goldstein was conducting a study for the 20th Century Fund, an independent research foundation.

Dual Codes

Thus, the marketplace--financial and intellectual--explains why newspapers publish most ads, and the standards of law, accuracy, fairness and taste explain why they reject some. (Fear of libel suits also prompts newspapers to reject some advertising; many newspapers refused to publish an ad for the Air Line Pilots Assn. in 1984 because they thought the ad carried potentially libelous “implications of wrongdoing” by airline executives.)

But even these seemingly clear guidelines aren’t always easy to interpret. That is why many newspapers’ advertising standards are printed in “codes of acceptability,” which range from a single sheet with a few short sentences at several newspapers to a book of more than 50 pages at the Los Angeles Times.

Some codes are very specific: The Detroit Free Press will not permit the use of such words as “affair,” “discreet” or “swinger” (among a dozen other, more suggestive words) in the “Companion Corner” classified ads it publishes every Sunday. The New York Daily News will not permit ads for any product promising to “prevent, correct or remove wrinkles.” The Los Angeles Times will not permit any ads that say “smog-free” or “no smog here.”

But no matter how specific advertising codes are, newspapers insist that the codes are only general guidelines, subject to the interpretation and enforcement of the publisher.

Policy Statement

“The company may, in its sole discretion, edit, classify, reject or cancel any advertising at any time,” says Ralph Rowe Jr., advertising director for the Kansas City Star and Times, in a policy statement typical of most newspapers.

Some newspapers--the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and St. Petersburg Times among them--have management committees that rule on the acceptability of especially sensitive or questionable ads. At the Post--and at the Chicago Tribune and Louisville Courier-Journal and Times--there is also one person in the advertising department whose primary responsibility is the enforcement of the paper’s advertising acceptability standards.

The New York Times also has someone charged with that responsibility--Robert Smith--but Smith works directly for the publisher, not for the advertising department. The New York Times thinks that since the function of the advertising department is to sell ads and bring in revenue, anyone responsible for accepting or rejecting advertising might appear to have his independence and credibility compromised if he worked for that department.

Given the high volume of advertising published in many newspapers, attempts to enforce standards of acceptability and to ensure accuracy and honesty aren’t always successful. Sometimes, newspapers don’t realize they’re publishing inaccurate or misleading ads.

Ad Hangs On

Five years ago, the Los Angeles Times continued to publish ads for a financial company for six weeks after state officials had taken action against the company for allegedly fraudulent activities. Why weren’t the ads canceled earlier? Because The Times advertising department said it didn’t know the state Corporations Department had ordered the company to stop what it was doing--even though a story about government investigations of the company had been prominently published in The Times.

Some newspapers take extra steps to prevent the publication of ads that could violate their standards.

The Kansas City Star and Times says it requires any advertiser claiming the lowest price in town to include in the ad a promise to meet or beat any lower price readers find elsewhere within 30 days. Last year, when a discount store in San Francisco wanted to run an ad in the Chronicle and Examiner for men’s suits “priced comparably” to those at a well-known department store, Raymond McManus, assistant advertising director for the San Francisco Newspaper Agency, says he made the advertiser come to the newspaper office with two suits from the department store and two from his own store so it could be determined that the suits were indeed identical.

Advertisers who fail to meet newspapers’ standards for honesty are sometimes denied advertising space. The St. Petersburg Times gave up a $235,000-a-year account when it refused to publish ads from an appliance store that wouldn’t change its bait-and-switch advertising tactics.

Elusive Quality

Ensuring fairness can be even more difficult than ensuring accuracy and honesty.

Most newspapers do not permit advertisers to make disparaging remarks about competitors (or others), for example, and both Newsday and the New York Times cited that guideline last year when they refused to publish ads that were harshly critical of New York in the course of promoting a Florida real estate development.

In an effort to avoid unfair or misleading statements, political and advocacy ads are scrutinized with special care at most papers. Some papers require that any claims in such ads be documented to the advertising department’s satisfaction.

The Atlanta Journal and Constitution insist that any political advertising that raises “new or controversial issues” be published no later than the Thursday before a Tuesday election to “allow the other side to answer . . . in the Sunday newspapers.”

At the St. Petersburg Times, copies of every political ad must be sent before publication to the chairman of the board, the editor, the editorial page editor, the managing editor and the vice president in charge of advertising.

Screening Chore

The Washington Post, because it is published in the nation’s capital, runs an enormous number of ads from special-interest organizations and foreign governments seeking to influence Congress and the White House. Two members of the Post advertising department are charged with screening those ads--and with securing independent translations of ads that include foreign words and phrases.

Late last November, an organization seeking the release of Nazi war criminal Rudolf Hess from Spandau prison submitted an ad to the Post that “included some statements that were not factual . . . and a vague connection to Christmas as a time of peace, trying to connect Hess to peacemaking efforts,” says Scotte Manns, director of advertising sales for the Post. “We thought that was misleading and inappropriate and we made them change it,” Manns says.

Seven years earlier, the Post refused to run an ad--a “Christmas Message to the Christian World” from the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini--because the ad called the 50 Americans then held hostage in Iran “spies and traitors.”

But some misleading advocacy ads slip through even the Post’s screening process. Five years ago, the Post--and 10 other papers--published a full-page ad that appeared to attribute anti-Israel views to six relief organizations. All six denied having anything to do with the ad.

‘Regrettable Lapse’

About 15 years ago, the New York Times actually published an editorial explaining its “regrettable lapse” in publishing an ad in the form of an open letter, bitterly critical of Israel and of then-President Richard M. Nixon’s “blind support” for Israel. The editorial emphasized, however, the paper’s commitment to “afford maximum reasonable opportunity to the public to express its views, however much opposed to our own, through various outlets in this newspaper, including the advertising columns.”

From time to time, federal officials have suggested that newspapers be held responsible for their ads, but newspaper publishers have always insisted that the responsibility must be borne by the advertiser, and nothing has ever come of the government proposals.

Suppose the government wanted to ban advertising of a particular product, though--as it banned advertising of cigarettes on radio and television in 1971?

The vast majority of newspapers vigorously oppose such suggestions. They accept advertising for tobacco, they say, because tobacco is legal--just as they refuse advertising for, say, handguns or fireworks if those commodities are illegal in their city or state. (The Detroit Free Press refused to accept an ad last year for “drug-free urine samples,” reasoning that to do so would be to encourage “deception, dishonesty.”) Shouldn’t the U.S. surgeon general’s statement that cigarette smoking is hazardous to the health of smokers and nonsmokers impose upon newspapers a social responsibility to refrain from advertising tobacco?

Answer Is No

With rare exception, most newspapers’ answer to that question is a resounding no.

A few smaller papers--the Salina (Kan.) Journal, the Kirksville (Mo.) Daily Express & News, the Bluffton (Ind.) News-Banner and the Morristown (N.J) Daily Record--do refuse cigarette advertising.

“We banned smoking in our plant in January, 1985,” says Mike Alfers, general manager of the Salina Journal. “We decided that if we were going to do that and attack smoking on our editorial page, we couldn’t very well take cigarette advertising.”

The Christian Science Monitor and the Deseret News, in Salt Lake City, also refuse tobacco ads--largely on religious grounds--and the Boston Globe banned cigarette advertising in 1969 on health grounds. But in 1974, the Globe announced that it had “reconsidered its position and . . . decided there is a larger question here--one of access, a responsibility . . . to allow the varying voices of the community appropriate access to . . . advertising space.

“Should a newspaper have the right to impose its view by economic sanctions?” the Globe asked in an editorial announcing that it would resume publication of cigarette ads. “We think not.”

Early Requirement

Most newspapers agree--including the New York Times, which required health warnings on cigarette ads before the government did.

Newspapers argue that people die from using many legal products--automobiles among them--and that no one seriously suggests that newspapers refuse to print ads for cars. Newspapers shouldn’t be censors, their advertising executives say; as long as cigarette ads carry the required disclaimer, identifying them as hazardous to health, it should be up to the reader to decide whether to smoke.

But some critics say newspaper opposition to a ban on cigarette advertising is based less on a commitment to a free flow of information than on a commitment to a free flow of dollars--cigarette advertising dollars.

The Salina Journal estimates that its ban on cigarette advertising costs the paper $50,000 a year. For larger papers, the loss would be considerably greater.

Only 1% of all newspaper advertising revenue comes from tobacco companies, but it isn’t that loss that worries newspapers; it’s the much larger loss they could suffer if a ban on cigarette advertising established a precedent, and advertisements for other, more lucrative products were subsequently banned as well.

Ban Endorsed

The American Medical Assn., the American Heart Assn. and the American Cancer Society have all called for a law prohibiting all advertising of tobacco, however, and Congress is expected to consider such a ban this year.

“If (other) everyday products kill, it’s usually because they have been misused, abused, negligently maintained or defectively made. Tobacco . . . is the only legally manufactured and legally advertised product in this nation that, according to a preponderance of scientific and medical opinion . . . kills a significant and predictable percentage of its users--as a side effect of its intended use,” wrote Dr. Alan Blum, a family physician, anti-smoking activist and former editor of the New York Journal of Medicine, in the December, 1986, issue of Quill, a magazine for journalists,

The courts have consistently held that newspapers have a First Amendment right to publish or reject advertising for legal products and services as they see fit. But last year, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a law in Puerto Rico restricting advertising of casino gambling, even though gambling is legal there.

The court’s 5-4 ruling said that if it would be constitutional for a state to prohibit the sale of a product “deemed harmful,” it might also be constitutional to restrict or prohibit advertising of that product without actually making its sale illegal.

Hoping for Action

Anti-smoking forces are hoping that decision will prompt congressional or judicial action to ban tobacco advertising.

As for newspapers’ arguments that it should be all right to advertise tobacco because tobacco is legal, critics point out that many newspapers routinely refuse to advertise a wide variety of legal products and services--among them contraceptives, X-rated movies, sexual aids, handwriting analysis, hair-restorers, abortion clinics, fortunetelling and escort services.

In most cases, taste and geography dictate these decisions, though.

About 100 newspapers, for example, prohibit liquor advertising--and most of them are smaller papers, generally in the South. Small papers and Southern papers also tend to be the most stringent on ads for condoms, X-rated movies and other sexually oriented goods and services.

“I think we’re a long way from (accepting condom ads) in Orlando,” says Raymond P. Dallman, vice president and director of advertising for the Orlando Sentinel. “We’re a conservative community . . . in the Bible Belt.”

Controversial Issue

The general arguments against condom advertising, as advanced by Robert Mulholland, director of the Television Information Office, are that the very subject of condoms would offend “large numbers of their viewers,” that it is controversial and that “if you encourage contraception, what you’re saying is that it’s all right to have premarital sex as long as no one gets pregnant.”

But Faye Wattleton, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, argues that tastefully done condom ads are less offensive than the suggestive and sexually provocative programs, stories and pictures that often fill the media--especially television--and she says that in today’s world, it’s naive to assume that people need condom ads to encourage them to indulge in premarital sex.

Nevertheless, newspaper advertising executives say that deciding which ads might offend readers is the single most difficult task they face. Taste, by definition, is subjective and arbitrary.

Some newspapers prohibit all advertising for social clubs and dating services; others permit them so long as there is no “appearance of sexual connotation” (to quote the Detroit Free Press regulations). Advertising executives at the Washington Post and St. Louis Post-Dispatch say the most difficult decision they have had to make on advertising involved the publication of anti-abortion ads that showed dead fetuses; several other papers say pro-abortion ads present them with their most difficult decisions.

Inner Boundaries

Questions of taste depend not only on where a newspaper is published but on where in a particular newspaper an ad is published. The New York Times has long published lingerie ads showing scantily clad women in its Sunday magazine, but the paper is very restrictive about illustrations for movie advertisements on its entertainment pages.

Indeed, although the rise of the adult videocassette market has greatly diminished the number of adult movie theaters, many newspaper advertising executives interviewed for this story said ads for sexually explicit or extremely violent movies present them with the most problematic application of their advertising codes.

“We’re a family newspaper,” one after another of the advertising executives said.

Some newspapers simply refuse all ads for X-rated movies. The New York Times accepts ads for such movies only if they’ve “received critical acclaim by recognized critics,” says Robert Smith, manager of the paper’s advertising acceptability department. Apparently that circumstance has not obtained since 1977 in the Times’ view, since Smith says that’s when the paper last published an ad for an X-rated movie--”In the Realm of the Senses.”

Strict Regulations

Most other newspapers have strict regulations, rigidly enforced, for X-rated movie ads; at the St. Petersburg Times, these ads can be no larger than one column wide by one inch deep, with no illustrations and no wording--including the title--”so provocative as to raise strong objections among our readers.”

Sometimes a movie distributor will change the title of a movie if newspaper objections seem likely to curtail advertising acceptance. That’s what Tri-Star Pictures did last year when early reports showed media resistance to advertising the title “Sexual Perversity in Chicago,” even though the movie was not X-rated and was based on a serious, award-winning Broadway play of the same title.

The movie version became “About Last Night . . . .”

If the distributor doesn’t change a movie title that newspapers find objectionable, some newspapers will change the title themselves--as the Detroit Free Press (among others) did in 1985, when “Little Oral Annie” suddenly became “Little Annie Takes Manhattan.”

These two examples notwithstanding, most newspapers say they turn down more movie ads because of violence than because of sex.

Rare Refusals

Those responsible for determining the acceptability of movie ads at the Los Angeles Times, for example, say they can recall refusing ads for only three or four movies in the last 10 years and all but (perhaps) one were rejected because of excessive violence, not sex.

But The Times insists on many revisions in language and illustration to conform to the paper’s standards on both sex and violence.

Just as political and advocacy advertising present special problems to the Washington Post because of where it’s published, so movie advertising often presents special problems to the Los Angeles Times because of where it’s published. Hollywood--Los Angeles--is the movie capital of the world, and advertisers often use the city (and The Times) as a test market.

In 1977, Otis Chandler, then publisher of The Times, announced that the paper would no longer accept ads for “hard-core pornographic movies.”

“Given our long and deep commitment to free expression,” Chandler wrote, “the decision to drop this advertising was reached reluctantly and after long and careful deliberation. The truth is we have been dealing with an indefensible product, one with absolutely no redeeming values.”

Suit Dismissed

Several makers of adult motion pictures filed suit against The Times over Chandler’s decision, but the suit was dismissed in Superior Court.

The Times now has one of the most careful--and most unusual--evaluation systems for potentially offensive movies of any newspaper.

The Times runs no ads for “hard-core pornographic movies”--which may explain why so few ads have been rejected on sexual grounds; ads for movies most likely to be offensive aren’t even submitted now that distributors know Times policy on such movies.

Advertising for all other movies must be submitted to The Times three days before publication--earlier than ads for other products and services--to permit the paper to make sure that the ads are acceptable and to enable the paper to return the ads for modifications if deemed necessary.

Two people in the paper’s advertising department are responsible for approving all questionable movie ads, and an examination of their files shows that they deem a lot of changes necessary. Sexually suggestive language or positions are forbidden. So are phallic symbols, naked or scantily clad bodies and inordinately large busts.

Three small ads submitted to The Times in December for Neil Simon’s “Brighton Beach Memoirs” featured an adolescent boy making a series of amusing remarks--remarks that included the words “bare breasts,” “horny” and “naked girl.” The Times insisted that all those words be deleted.

Delicate Wording

Thus, “I’d give up writing if I could see a naked girl while I was eating ice cream,” was replaced by the advertiser with, “My brother Stan told me you can’t marry your first cousin because you get babies with nine heads.”

Earlier last year, distributors of the movie “Screen Test” were told their ad in The Times couldn’t use the line, “The girls thought they were starring in a movie. . . . But the guys wanted them to star somewhere else.” Instead, the ad said, “Some girls have what it takes to become a star. And some do what it takes.”

In 1981, ads for the James Bond film “For Your Eyes Only” showed Bond with a gun--framed, in the distance--between a woman’s legs. At first, The Times asked that the woman’s scantily clad buttocks be fully covered. That was done. Then The Times asked that the buttocks be eliminated altogether, showing only the legs. That is how the ad ran.

X-rated movies or movies that haven’t been rated by the Motion Picture Assn. of America are submitted to one of The Times film critics for evaluation. If the critic says the movie has redeeming social value, the ad is accepted; if not, it isn’t--as in the case of one movie that critic Kevin Thomas found “a protracted exercise in morbidity, violence and torture.”

Employee Decisions

As near as could be determined in interviews for this story, The Times is the only paper that follows this practice--in effect, asking employees of the news and editorial department to make advertising decisions.

“It’s not a responsibility I enjoy having,” says Charles Champlin, arts editor of The Times. “But . . . I’m more comfortable with our making the decision than having advertising make it. I don’t think ad guys should sit in judgment on what’s art.”

Thomas, the Times critic who evaluates most of these movies, agrees with Champlin.

“Far, far more often than not,” Thomas says, “I tell them (the advertising department), ‘Sure, go ahead (accept the ad). It’s pretty trashy, but it’s not going to harm anybody.”’

Once, when Thomas gave the go-ahead to such a movie, the decision was sent for review to Tom Johnson, who has succeeded Chandler as publisher.

Johnson’s reply came back to the advertising department:

“Go ahead. Ugh.”

Susanna Shuster of The Times editorial library assisted with research for this story.