2008 Woodie Awards
EDITORIAL: Editors refuse controversial anti-abortion ad
La Voz Editorial Board
Issue date: 10/9/06 Section: Opinion
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Recently, La Voz was approached by the Human Life Alliance, an anti-abortion group, who wanted to buy advertising space.
The organization wanted to insert a 12-page booklet in the newspaper called "Stop The Madness," designed to dissuade people from supporting legalized abortion.
The First Amendment is something we at La Voz care about and go to great lengths to defend. The La Voz staff discussed in depth the pros and cons of including the insert. Both anti-abortion and pro-abortion rights staff members expressed their opinions.
The editorial board decided that running the insert would not be in the best interest of the newspaper.
The decision whether or not to run the ad was not based on views about abortion. We speculated how the average reader would react to La Voz running a 12-page anti-abortion insert.
We knew that some readers would see inclusion of the ad as support of anti-abortion politics, because the insert looked like it was an accompanying magazine.
Litter was another concern for us. Many of our advertising inserts end up on the ground. We don't want to add to the litter on campus.
Many of our staff members thought the graphics in the ad were offensive and inappropriate, no matter how we felt about abortion rights.
La Voz's job is to report the news - not make the news. La Voz appreciates the debate that arises over an opinion article we publish.
But we're not interested in causing a stir over an advertisement that we have no affiliation with.
Readers should be able to clearly tell the difference between a paid advertisement and an opinion article endorsing or denouncing a particular product or idea.
But this ad looked too much like a La Voz endorsed magazine for us to have confidence that the community could tell the difference.
We encourage readers to look at the anti-abortion material themselves and make up their own mind.
An online version of the advertisement is available on the Human Life Alliance's Web site:
www.humanlife.org/stopmadness.php
Viewing Comments 1 - 2 of 2
Justin Berry
posted 10/12/06 @ 2:56 PM PST
I think it was a wise descision not to run the abortion insert. No matter what you would have offended half of your readers and possibly lost some of there support. (Continued…)
Jack Wu
posted 10/14/06 @ 11:05 PM PST
Litter is a concern? Then why even publish a newspaper? They end up the ground as well.
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