It’s been more than a week since the Washington Post ran a horrid, racially-targeted screed against gay people as an advertising supplement — since then, I’ve been scouring the paper waiting to see what letters it attracted and if the ombudsman would take up the issue.
Nothing.
No letters to the editor, no commentary, no ombudsman.
I find it hard to believe that the Post hasn’t received any comments about this supplement; just as I find it hard to believe that they ran it in the first place. Did I imagine it all?
Is the Post ignoring a surge of complaints? I guess they’ll be going on the homosexual enemies list.
Gene,
I’m also surprised that they haven’t followed up on this in their own paper. Editor and Publisher did a piece about this last week, noting that the paper had received over 1,000 complaints but that they stood by their decision to distribute the advertisement. Here’s what Post management said, in part:
“Marc Rosenberg, manager of corporate and public policy advertising for the Post. ‘The key issue is that it is clearly identified as an advertising message.'”
“‘We will not allow something hateful to go in the paper,’ Post Publisher Boisfeuillet Jones Jr. said, indicating he did not believe this incident involved a hateful message. ‘Gay marriage is a public issue and matter of public debate, and we believed its point of view has a right to be expressed.'”
“Post Ombudsman Mike Getler: ‘They might have insisted more that this be in a format that was clearly not a magazine. You could argue that the disclosure could have been larger. But the Post did not commit a sin by accepting it.'”