[Peace-discuss] Fwd:Viacom refuses to air anti-war ads

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   MSNBC.com [INLINE]

   Billboard Ban

   A Viacom division is refusing to run antiwar ads on its outdoor sites
     IMG: peace message
   Peace message: The ad that MoveOn.org wanted to run in major markets
   around the nation
   [INLINE]
   By Michael Hastings
   NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE
   Feb. 13 -  Getting out the antiwar message has never been easy, but
   now a peace group has accused one of America's largest media companies
   of censorship for its refusal to run a national billboard campaign
   with the slogan: INSPECTIONS WORK. WAR WON'T.


           VIACOM, THE OWNER of a number of media outlets like CBS and
   MTV, says it is just following company policy. But Wes Boyd, president
   of MoveOn.org says the media giant is playing fast and loose with the
   right to free speech. "Viacom won't place our ads," says Boyd.
           MoveOn.org, the group that put up the money for the campaign,
   first gained public attention after running the controversial "daisy"
   television spot riffing on an ad from Lyndon B. Johnson's 1964
   presidential campaign that juxtaposed a little girl pulling petals
   from a flower against the backdrop of a nuclear explosion. Yesterday
   morning, the organization-which describes itself as a grass-roots
   advocacy group-solicited donations over an e-mail list to raise
   $75,000 to plaster its latest message against war in Iraq on the sides
   of buses, buildings and billboards in four major American markets.
           According to Boyd, the donations came rolling in-after just
   two hours the group had met its goal. About 75 percent of that money
   was slated for buses in Washington and billboards in Los Angeles and
   Detroit, markets where Viacom Outdoor-a division of Viacom Inc. and
   the largest outdoor-advertising entity in North America-controls a
   significant share of the outdoor-advertising space. And Boyd says that
   unlike the "daisy" TV spot, this was meant to be "a clean political
   message." (The "daisy" ad ran into trouble but on a lesser scale. Only
   four television stations nixed the ad; three in L.A. and one in
   Washington.)
           But yesterday afternoon, MoveOn.org received word from
   Metromark International, an advertising and media brokerage firm that
   was hired to buy ad space for the group, saying that Viacom refused to
   put up the ads.
           The rejection came as a surprise to Lou Manso, the Metromark
   buyer handling the sale. He says the regional Viacom representatives
   in Los Angeles hadn't given any indication that there was going to be
   a problem. The art for the billboard was submitted on Monday, and
   there was no indication that it would be rejected, he said. But on
   Wednesday, a regional Viacom representative told Manso that Wally
   Kelly, CEO of Viacom Outdoor, had personally decided not to run the
   ads. Manso received an e-mail that said: "Our main office has decided
   to decline this business." Manso says he was not given any reasons for
   the decision, except that it was Viacom's space and they could do what
   they wanted with it. "I'm very disappointed," says Manso. "I didn't
   feel that this campaign was offensive or in poor taste. You have [the
   decision of] one person in Phoenix, and it affects all the markets in
   the U.S."
           Viacom, however, says it had legitimate reasons to decline the
   advertisements. "The issue was not the content of the ad, but the
   guidelines for taking ads from organizations of this type," a Viacom
   spokesperson told NEWSWEEK. "They didn't meet the guidelines."
   According to the spokesperson, those guidelines are: to pay up