If you’re a longtime reader of this site you know that maybe every year or so I do a post reiterating our ad policy — first announced more than three years ago when we first started taking ads. The key point in the policy is simple enough: while we reserve the right to reject ads on the basis of taste and appropriateness, we neither accept nor reject ads on the basis of political content. Clearly, if you wished to do so, you could find ‘taste’ or ‘appropriateness’ reasons to reject a lot of stuff you just don’t agree with politically or find politically offensive. But as best as we are able we try never to do that.
Now, in the past this has always been a fairly theoretical issue. Because given the nature of the site there just weren’t that many conservative causes, candidates or people who were interested in advertising with us. My annual or semi-annual posts were usually occasioned by reader complaints or queries about the occasional ad. So, for instance, back in 2005 there was an ad for an Ann Coulter book we ran. A year or so ago there was an anti-Net Neutrality ad. And recently there was an anti-union ad.
Clearly, though, that’s changed. Recently there’ve been a lot of John McCain ads and another ad for some daily email from Ann Coulter. Now, as it happens, these two ads are, I think, coming through the Google ad network. So we don’t have any contact with the advertiser. We sign on to the Google Adsense service and the ads just appear. We see them the first time when you do. But that doesn’t change the real issue. We could stop them from running if we wanted to. But we don’t.
These ads have prompted a lot of emails, ranging from bemusement to curiosity to outrage (with a decided lean toward the end of the list.)
So let me explain again why this is our policy.
The reason is essentially twofold. The first and most important reason is that the policy is critical to preserving the editorial integrity of our product, which is news and information. Precisely because we are in the news and opinion business, advertising tied to ideas, issues or advocacy presents us with a particular challenge. If we reject ads that we disagree with, every ad we accept becomes, to one degree or another, a de facto endorsement. And that’s a de facto endorsement that is tied to money we’re paid to run the advertising. In other words, if we run ads only from candidates or causes we support, then the ad relationship also becomes an endorsement relationship. Even worse a paid endorsement. And that threatens the integrity of what we do — which is to report the facts we find and explain the opinions we have.
Many ‘slippery slope’ arguments don’t hold up. But this is one that there is no way around. And that is why while we very much appreciate the support of our advertisers our attitude toward who is advertising and what they are advocating is one of intentional indifference.
So when you see an ad on our site you shouldn’t draw any conclusion from its presence that TPM endorses it, agrees with it, disagrees with it, etc. It only means that the advertiser has purchased a product we sell, which is commercial space on our sites. That’s all. Nothing more. And, again, certainly not because we don’t appreciate the funds that allow us to do our work but because that attitude and policy of indifference is essential to our work.
Now, a digression. Do we ever reject ads? Yes, we do. In most cases they’re ads for ‘dating services’ that look like they might run afoul of anti-solicitation laws or sites that promise to show you this or that starlet with her boobs exposed. Not that we’re against boobs, but … a time and a place. Going back a few years there were also some ads for anti-Bush goods that I rejected because I found them tasteless. We of course frequently reject ads that are too visually jarring and we’re pretty strict on not having ads that have little creatures running across the site or stuff like that. I would reject an ad that contained what I considered hate speech or an ad which itself seemed intentionally demeaning to our audience. But again, I would always try to err on the side of inclusion.
In any case, what I’ve set forth above is both a necessary and a sufficient reason for the policy we follow. But there’s another additional reason that it makes sense to me. We fund TPM by selling space where people can communicate with our readers. That’s our business model. Clearly, there are no constitutional free speech issues at stake in who we allow or don’t allow to run ads on our site. We’re a private business, etc. But there is a free speech ethic that is at least implicated in all this.
If you read my site you know a good bit about me, at least a part of me. You know that I have strong opinions and voice them, often aggressively. But the business part of TPM isn’t part of that. There are ideas or people that I’d like to tear apart in argument. But it would just be distasteful to me personally at some level to use the power I have as the owner of this business to prevent them from communicating their message to the TPM audience. There are a lot of readers who say that seeing certain ideas or images or people presented in advertising simply offends them. They don’t want to see it. But that’s just not a sensibility I share in most cases.
That’s not to say that there haven’t been ads that have annoyed me every time I opened my site and saw them there. I can think of one or two in particular. But this policy — one of intentional indifference to the political content of the advertising that appears on our sites — is one I’m confident is the right one for us because it protects what is most important to us which is the integrity and credibility of the news and opinion we publish.
