Google ads started running "Yes on 8" banners on Talking Points Memo today. No matter how many times I hit "refresh," it delivered not just one but two of them. It was an especially ugly and deceptive couple of ads, too, although that's kind of like saying some parts of hell are hotter than others.
So I stopped going there, all day long.
I checked again this evening, thinking maybe they'd have tweaked their Google ads settings, the way other progressive sites I visit have done during this bitter campaign, and when I saw "no on 8" and Netflix ads instead of the hate mongering ones, I figured it was over.
Wrong. Because tonight they've posted a statement that they decided not to block the ads, out of loyalty to some bullshit higher principle about their site guidelines, which apparently are more important than civil rights:
We follow this policy because it is essential 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. 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. That threatens the integrity of what we do -- which is to report the facts we find and explain the opinions we have.
I've heard that kind of rationale before, and it's crap. This isn't about politics, and this isn't a "cause." This is a civil rights issue, period. There aren't two sides to this any more than there are two sides to racism or anti-Semitism.
I don't mind that the site takes McCain ads, even though I couldn't oppose him more. Most of the political sites I visit take his ads, and frankly, it amuses me to think of them wasting their money on such infertile ground. This, however, is completely different.
This is giving voice and a platform to an organized effort to strip me and all other lesbian and gay Californians of our civil rights.
On a personal level, seeing those ads is brutalizing to me. I feel gutted. If you can even imagine what it's like to know that tomorrow millions of stangers who have never so much as laid eyes on me will be voting on my equality to them, maybe you'd realize this is not the equivalent of taking a McCain ad.
TPM of course can do what they want. As can I, which is not to go back unless and until they reconsider this decision. There's really only so much I can stand.
Hmmmm....though it makes me want to throw up, I can see a problem for them in that this was an actual ballot initiative, in contrast to (for example) an ad calling for a ballot initiative. The form letter does a bad and offensive job of stating their position with that phrase "candidates or causes we support."
For a site that bills itself as "news and analysis" to refuse an ad reflecting the (however henious) political position of a (however henious) citizen on a matter that is actually up for a vote ...
Posted by: Barbara Saunders | 06 November 2008 at 05:57 PM