Combs Spouts Off

Does it come as a surprise to anyone that the New York Times provides steep discounts to moonbat groups running ads that libel U.S. military commanders?

Headlined "Cooking the Books for the White House," the ad which ran in Monday's Times says Petraeus is "a military man constantly at war with the facts" and concluded – even before he testified before Congress – that "General Petraeus is likely to become General Betray Us."

According to Abbe Serphos, director of public relations for the Times, "the open rate for an ad of that size and type is $181,692."

A spokesman for MoveOn.org confirmed to The Post that the liberal activist group had paid only $65,000 for the ad – a reduction of more than $116,000 from the stated rate.

A Post reporter who called the Times advertising department yesterday without identifying himself was quoted a price of $167,000 for a full-page black-and-white ad on a Monday.

Serphos declined to confirm the price and refused to offer any inkling for why the paper would give MoveOn.org such a discounted price.

The only thing I'm wondering is if they'd even accept a similar ad from a right-wing group calling, for instance, Sen. Clinton a liar or Sen. Reid a crook. 

UPDATE: Freedom's Watch, Ari Fleischer's pro-victory organization that's been running ads in support of the mission in Iraq, has a new one directly challenging MoveOn.org (all their ads are on YouTube here). And they've also challenged the New York Times, demanding equal treatment:

Freedom's Watch, a group committed to victory in the War on Terror, is
calling on the Times to provide equal treatment for their response ad.

"It's outrageous that the New York Times would give a radical left-wing
organization like MoveOn.org a discounted rate to publish an ad smearing
the credibility of General Petraeus. Freedom's Watch was not offered the
same discounted rate to run an ad supporting our troops the very next day.
The New York Times owes us and its readers an explanation," said Bradley A.
Blakeman, President of Freedom's Watch. "We demand that the New York Times
allow Freedom's Watch to run a response ad with the same placement, size,
and at exactly the same cost."

It'll be interesting to see what the Times does.

UPDATE 2: Rudy Giuliani has also asked the Times for the same ad rate (that video site has buckled under the onslaught; if the link doesn't work, here's the NRO story). And Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, reading in part:

I sold political advertising for Capital Newspapers in Madison, WI during the 2006 elections. We were informed that there could be absolutely no discounts to the rate card prices for political or advocacy advertising based on federal law. The reason was self-evidently to stop the paper from favoring one viewpoint over another. It seems evident that if the reports are true, the NY Times has favored MoveOn by offering a huge discount to them for political advocacy advertising.

I request an investigation to determine if the law has been broken by the NY Times and/or MoveOn.org.

Yeah, sic their beloved election-controlling, speech-regulating, red-tape-generating bureaucracy on the bastards.

(HT: LGF) 

UPDATE 3 (9/14): Today's Times contains Rudy's ad (they apparently gave him the MoveOn rate). It's on his campaign website here — you have to click where indicated to display the whole thing; they want you looking at the donation form first.

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