A NY Times-owned radio station in NYC, has refused to air a paid commercial by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) even though the ad has been aired on hundreds of radio stations in the United States.
David A. Harris, the Executive Director of AJC writes the following:
On behalf of AJC, I do a weekly national 60-second radio spot. The time is purchased as any advertisement would be. For the past nearly seven years, it has been broadcast across the United States on the CBS radio network, on hundreds of stations, without incident.
Earlier this year, we expanded the reach by adding in the New York area WQXR, a popular classical music station owned by the New York Times.
For the week of March 31, here was the text to be aired:
Fifteen seconds. Imagine you had fifteen seconds to find shelter from an incoming missile. Fifteen seconds to locate your children, help an elderly relative, assist a disabled person to find shelter.
That’s all the residents of Sderot and neighboring Israeli towns have.
Day or night, the sirens go on. Fifteen seconds later, the missiles, fired from Hamas-controlled Gaza, hit. They could hit a home, a school, a hospital. Their aim is to kill and wound and demoralize.
Imagine yourself in that situation.
The sirens blast. 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. The time to seek shelter has ended. The missiles hit.
This is what Israelis experience daily. But, amazingly, they refuse to be cowed. Help us help those Israelis.
The spot was broadcast several times, as is customary, on the CBS radio network, but WQXR refused to do so.
Here’s the written explanation from Tom Bartunek, president of New York Times Radio and general manager of WQXR:
”In my judgement several elements of this spot are outside our bounds of acceptability. First, the opening line— `Imagine you had fifteen seconds to find shelter from an oncoming missile’—does not make clear that the potential target of the missile is not our listening area, and as a consequence, runs the risk of raising anxiety in a misleading way. Second, the description of the missiles as arriving `day or night’ and `daily’ is also subject to challenge as being misleading, at least to the degree that reasonable people might be troubled by the absence of any acknowledgement of reciprocal Israeli military actions. Finally, in my judgement the `countdown’ device and the general tone of the message do not meet our guidelines for decorum.”
Stunning, above all, is the reference to “the absence of any acknowledgement of reciprocal Israeli military actions.”
In other words, according to Bartunek’s logic, the only way to broadcast the plight of Sderot’s residents over the airwaves is to equate Israel’s right of self-defense with Hamas’s and Islamic Jihad’s right to strike Israel at will.
Notice I didn’t say ”day or night” or ”daily” this time, because that might be construed as ”misleading.” Next time I’m in Sderot, I’ll be sure to let its residents know they have less to worry about than they thought because, according to some in the United States, their attackers keep banker’s hours. Meanwhile, Bartunek ought to read about the situation in Sderot in the April 5 front-page article in the paper that owns his station.
In a subsequent phone conversation with one of my AJC colleagues, Bartunek went further. He explained that the radio station does not run ads with sirens or gun shots, neither of which was included in our spots.”
Well, that certainly helps clarify matters about rejecting a spot that sought to draw attention to innocent people under rocket attack who might need understanding and support.
I can only imagine what would have been the response had we done a spot during the London blitz. Would it have been turned down as well, perhaps on the grounds that we failed to refer to reciprocal British military actions against Nazi Germany?
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15 Responses
What can we citizens jointly do about this outrage?
More “impeccable logic” from the intellectual (I use the term lightly) left.
While truly disturbing. I am not the least bit surprised at the reaction from a NY Times owned company. I would expect the exact same reaction from a CNN owned company. I would like to see the mainstream media pick up on this ridiculously blatant, pro-arab slant of the NY Times.
Sadly, I don’t expect better from the NY Slimes.
Why don’t all YWN readers email the NY Times to protest. That may work…
You can e-mail WQXR at: [email protected]
The obvious truth is he does not want to accept it for political reasons; the station likely views Israel as the aggressor and its citizens as rightfully hounded as a result, the latter part of which is indisputably not right and amoral.
For those who don’t realize, though, QXR is not a news station where they hear all sorts of stories; QXR plays classical music where the greatest stress level coming across those airways is from a particularly solemn Beethoven or the like. So I do understand his dislike of the “Imagine” for being provocative and “scary” (which is the point of the commercial).
Same with him not liking the countdown; QXR wants a certain tone to its commercials, and I respect this particular reason they gave. To illustrate, CBS news would not likely not accept a commercial with thugs yelling heavy metal throughout the 60 second spot, because it is outside of what their listeners expect to hear. Same here.
The “lack of acknowledgement of reciprocal Israeli actions”, however, is wrong on a number of counts, and shows where his heart really lies – far from the innocent civilians of Sderot.
Logic dictates that if Israel expelled its citizens from Gaza, it has no intent on having anything to do with the place other to protect its citizens, like any normal country would.
Even if one were to say that the IDF intentionally bombs Gaza civilians (and I very highly doubt that they do) during its hunt for savage murderers, then, as we all learned in grade school, two wrongs don’t make a right, so, therefore, the savages have no right to send off rockets that they intend to land in civilian areas to cause terror, murdering and maiming innocent people while achieving no internationally-accepted (nor any other) military objective.
Therefore, what the IDF does in Gaza is wholly irrelevant to the savages shooting rockets at Israeli civilian areas (living in pre-67 Israel, by the way); to equate the two with this nauseating moral equivalence, then, shows that the entity making the decision not to air the spot must have a bias and is not being forthright and objective, to say the least.
The NY TIMES and its ilk such as the ACLU always preach free speech.
Here is a small list approved by the NY times crowd:
Bashing Bush
Bashing Israel
Bashing the “neo-cons”
Kvelling over Obama and Hillary.
Crying over the deaths of hamas terrorist (oops I should have called them ‘militias’ or ‘freedom fighters’.)
Promulgating shmutz in the name of free speech
etc. etc.
Free speech does not exist when dealing with
things they do not approve of.
How hypocritical.
How sad from the newspaper of record.
“temple” emanuel on fifth avenue has kabalat shabbat at 630 every friday; the same time all year long.
because they are (were, gotta check if still so) on wqxr, and you cant have a radio program that broadcasts at different times during the year.
This is what i wrote to the customer relations at 96.3
:
It is hard for me find the right words on how i felt when i first find out about this incident concerning the refusal to air a commercial about Sederot.
It is despicable and unacceptable by any means of decency.
I any many more will bring this incident up to light and let this incident be made know to all.
QXR airs all sorts of politically charged advertisements. In this particular instance QXR is probably worried about offending a good portion of their listeners, left wing Jews. QXR caters to the whims of these listeners all the time. Every Friday afternoon they dedicate 30 minutes of airtime to a “shabbat service” from a prominent reform temple.
I am not defending the arguments used by QXR, but purely from a business perspective it is a very sound decision NOT to run the ad. It WILL offend a large number of listeners. In fact, seeing the arguments used, it would not surprise me if he asked representatives of these listeners for their opnion and spit back their response.
The following is an email I sent to WQXR, which was once a station that I listened to. However, some of the other commentors really put it better.
=====================================
Tom Bartunek,
If this were your relatives, would you care more about perhaps causing some, “anxiety,” among the general public than the issue itself? You would at least suggest that the message be slightly reworded. WQXR cannot be considered the type of station that it calls itself, with such an attitude. Your sense of morality is less than
acceptable by the most ugly degenerate cultures that broadcast their, “music”, on the airwaves. You will now loose many listeners hopefully, and their support.
name
Ignore WQXR. The New York Timmus will be out of business soon. It’s true that you cannot believe most of the media outlets now, but, thank G-d, you generally get the truth from right-wing talk radio. While right-wing talk radio Is not perfect, the Times is phony, biased and left-slanted. Save the crossword puzzle, they are basically irrelevant.
I suggest that anyone who has a subscription to the Times cancel it. Immediately.
i believe that all jews should have 2 subscriptions to the NY times instead of 1
like most jews have(because they need to keep up with important business news)(btw they could hear it on the radio the night before)
the first thing we need to do is stop being self hating
i dont believe for a minute that if the jewish press started publishing the BEST business news in the world that even 1 muslim would buy it
I sent an email to the radio station calling them to task for their line,
“Second, the description of the missiles as arriving `day or night’ and `daily’ is also subject to challenge as being misleading, at least to the degree that reasonable people might be troubled by the absence of any acknowledgement of reciprocal Israeli military actions.”
This was their response:
“Thank you for writing. We chose not to air this ad for several reasons.
Primary among them was the concern that the message does not make clear that the potential target of the missile is not our listening area and runs the risk of raising anxiety in a misleading way. All advertisements are reviewed according to our advertising acceptability standards. This ad, in particular, did not meet those standards. It is important to note, though, that WQXR ran eight other AJC advertisements read by David Harris over the past twelve weeks. We value your opinion and will be sure that your comments are communicated to our management team. WQXR Listener Mail”