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Where There's Smoke...
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Business New Haven
11/22/1999
By: BNH
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By now, the Maximum Leaders of the Hartford Courant have probably thought better of their decision to run an October 20 story on newspapers and cigarette advertising.
The news "hook" was an announcement by the Los Angeles Times, flagship paper of the Courant's owner, Times Mirror, that it would no longer accept tobacco-advertisements. The L.A. Times joined the New York Times and a couple of other large dailies in saying no to butts.
Is this a trend? Hard to say, since the Courant failed to persuade other Connecticut papers to state their own tobacco-ad policies - or even to return calls. So touchy are newspapers about taking tobacco money that Courant reporter Robin Stansbury couldn't even get an on-the-record, attributed statement from her own paper. "A Courant spokesman" said the paper "does not reject" cigarette ads.
So much for toeing the corporate line. Indeed, Courant adoptees (and thus Times Mirror step-grandchildren) the Advocate newsweeklies are so comfortable suckling at the tobacco teat that an August issue of their Fairfield County paper carried a prominent cigarette insert - offering free cigarettes - in the "Back To School Survival Guide" issue. ("Stressed Out About School?" it asked. Start smoking!)
Lightning-rod issues such as cigarette advertising invariably up the hogwash ante. Connecticut Civil Liberties Union head Joe Grabarz even raised the First Amendment specter in wondering how a newspaper could deny access to one legal product, but not others.
That is exactly 180 degrees wrong. The purpose of the First Amendment is to insulate private companies like Times Mirror from efforts by any arm of the government to restrict anything they do. Even rejecting ads for an outcast but not outlawed product.
Business New Haven does not accept tobacco ads. That's our decision - not the government's. And we will fight any intrusion into our decision about what ads we - or anyone else - may accept or reject.
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