• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, May 8, 2006

I have a client (which, to protect the innocent, will remain nameless) that found cause recently to pull ads off a site in its vast network because its executives assumed--rightly, as it turns out--that the advertiser did not want to be adjacent to a photo depicting President Bush in a highly derogatory manner. The site that lost the ad launched an attack on my client, claiming such a depiction of the President was an expression of free speech and that the site, by losing the ad income, was being punished for exercising that free speech.

My client agreed that free speech is important and that the site had every right to editorially express it however it might see fit, but that it could not expect advertisers to support the site regardless of how tasteless the content. As you might have expected, the publisher retorted that pulling ad support is a form of censorship, and that the network was making a political statement, not an economic decision.

New-world editorial, please shake hands with old-world media economics 101. This is a battle that has been fought on every front of traditional media for decades. It will be no different for new media.

Editors like to think that they are artists, free to create content that is pleasing and perhaps challenging to readers. This, they think, is how you build a loyal audience--which then attracts subscription income and advertising to pay the bills and to provide a nice income for all hands aboard the Good Ship Free Speech. When content runs afoul of an advertiser's sensibilities--as you will recall the Los Angeles Times offending GM's--advertisers express unhappiness by pulling their ads. This really pisses off editors, who feel they shouldn't have to pander to any corporate interests in the course of planning and producing stories. The readers, they think, will see though the slightest hint of pandering, and cancel their subscriptions in great disgust.

Or will they?

Nearly every magazine, newspaper or television program in the nation, at one time or another, has turned a blind eye to the strict separation of church and state in order to protect its relationships with sources, advertisers or investors. And, by and large, readers couldn't have cared less. When I taught magazine publishing at NYU's Summer Publishing Institute (a program in which recent college grads wasted six weeks of making potentially life-changing contacts in favor of partying all night on their parents' dime in New York City) we had an entire day devoted to the separation of church and state--which, at the start, was rigidly supported by all of the kids with only modest hangovers. But after discussing dozens of real-world examples, which they concluded "weren't all that bad," they held only the newsweekly to the highest possible standard.

But we digress. The issue at hand is, do advertisers have an obligation to support content they think is tasteless, fraudulent, or simply politically incorrect? As we enter a whole new world of consumer-generated content and limitless Internet-delivered TV, this issue takes on new and greater urgency. Which is more important, the right of the site to report on the plane crash or the right of the airline not to have its ad run adjacent to the story? Do I not report the plane crash because I know I will lose the ad income? Do I pull my ad, knowing it might financially weaken the site to the point that it cannot afford to report on future plane crashes or wars or scandals or men biting dogs?

Somehow, some way, the most offensive kind of art and literature finds someone willing to underwrite its exhibition or publication (if only the federal government), so I do not lose sleep worrying that free speech, as we have come to defend it, is in danger of disappearing. Now, thanks to the Internet, the worst kind of content can enjoy worldwide distribution at almost no cost. So, I am of the mind that advertisers who pick when and where their ads will run are not trying to censor the free flow of ideas, but rather are simply avoiding being associated with some of the worst of such ideas. If you think a cross in a glass of pee is art, God bless you. But good luck convincing advertisers that underwriting the glass is a fair-minded, "free speech" kind of thing to do.

My client built its entire business on service to its publishers, audiences and advertisers. While its executives might have curried favor with a single publisher by not pulling the ads around the offending content, my client would have sent a signal to advertisers that their interests come last in the equation.

That is simply not how the real world works.