During the course of reporting the story "Ads for Gambling Sites Abound Despite Legal Crackdown on Media" (MediaDailyNews, Jan. 30), MSNBC.com pulled two such ads that appeared on the Covers.com
section within its sports channel. MSNBC.com said it removed the ads for World Sports Exchange and PartyPoker.com before 1 p.m. EST on Jan. 29, prior to the posting of the Jan. 30 report on
MediaDailyNews. The ads' existence was first brought to MSNBC.com's attention by MediaDailyNews. "The bottom line is that sports betting ads are illegal on our site, and we enforced our policy," said
Cherylynne Crowther, VP-marketing, MSNBC.com. "Once we realized that we had out-of-policy ads running, we yanked them," she said. The online publisher, a unit of Microsoft Corp., worked with the
consolidator Covers.com to resolve the situation. As of Jan. 30, house ads for Covers.com appeared on MSNBC.com's co-branded Covers.com page.