The Tennessean newspaper has apologized for publishing a full-page advertisement from an end-times prophecy group that announced “Islam is going to detonate a nuclear device in Nashville.”
The ad didn’t meet the paper’s standards against hate speech and should have been rejected, said Kevin Gentzel, the chief revenue officer of the paper’s parent company, Gannett.
“We strongly condemn the message and apologize to our readers. We are immediately investigating to determine how this could have happened,” Getnzel told the Tennessean in a report on the ad.
“Clearly there was a breakdown in the normal processes,” the paper’s editor Michael A. Anastasi added.
Another version of the ad, “one that did not mention Islam but also contained an end-times prophecy,” ran on Wednesday, the Tennessean reported.
This morning, the Nashville @Tennessean — the largest newspaper in the state — published a full-page ad from a far-right client warning “Islam is going to detonate a nuclear device in Nashville, Tennessee.” It’s accompanied by photos of Donald Trump and Pope Francis. pic.twitter.com/9vvUbteSIh
— Alex Martin Smith (@asmiff) June 21, 2020
The wordy full-page screed came from an apocalyptic religious group — The Ministry of Future for America — and insisted that Islam “is the issue that pushes the world into a one-world government as the world attempts to address the escalating warfare brought by the Islamic religion.”
A photo collage at the top of the ad showed President Donald Trump and Pope Francis looking downtrodden in front of several burning American flags.
The ad ran through a veritable mixtape of conspiracy theories — calling out Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump, the Catholic Church, the United Nations, “and the backslidden Seventh-day Adventist Church.”
Before a lengthy quote from the Book of Ezekiel, the ad urged readers to visit a website for “a biblical defense for all these seemingly absurd claims.”
But once we realized we could print an apology in the next edition, we took the money and published it anyway, he added.
I know advertising revenue has dried up, but damn, this does not belong in a Gannett newspaper. Put it in a tabloid next to a story about Batboy.
Newspaper ads. How quaint.
So … did anyone in the editing dept. go to journalism school? Umm, is /was there a “Trump School of Journalism” ever?
If they’re really sincere in their apology, donate the money to a mosque in Nashville or to a community food bank. Racist jerks.