N.Y. Times says it violated ad policy

After two weeks of denials, the New York Times acknowledged that it should not have given a discount to MoveOn.org for a full-page ad assailing Army Gen. David H. Petraeus.

The liberal group MoveOn should have paid $142,000, not $65,000, for the ad that referred to the U.S. commander in Iraq as “General Betray Us,” wrote Clark Hoyt, the newspaper’s public editor. Hoyt said the group was not entitled to the rate for ads that can run any day of the week because the Times promised it would run the day Petraeus began his congressional testimony. MoveOn said it would send the newspaper $77,000. Hoyt said the Times also violated its ad policy, which bars “attacks of a personal nature.”