An advertisement being placed in various college publications throughout the nation has caused many student journalists to evaluate what advertising content is acceptable to print.
The ad, “Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery is a Bad Idea - and Racist Too,” was an attempt to promote a new book by author David Horowitz, called “The Death of the Civil Rights Movement.”
Many college newspapers have printed the advertisement, causing verbal outbreaks on campus.
Alex Conant, the managing editor of The Badger Herald at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said the newspaper ran the ad and would do it again.
“Opinions that run in our paper do not reflect opinions of the staff,” he said. “There was concern raised after it was published however.”
Since the advertisement was published, the newspaper has received plenty of feedback - both positive and negative. Most notably, the Herald’s rival publication, The Daily Cardinal, ran an advertisement funded by campus groups that called the Badger Herald “a racist propaganda machine.”
Sarah Murray, managing editor for The Daily Cardinal, said her publication’s ad was the result of more than just the Herald’s decision to run the reparation advertisement.
The Badger Herald has also ran a cartoon in the past using KKK members as characters.
“The minority groups on campus felt they were due an apology of some sort, and we did not agree,” said Contant, of The Badger Herald.
“But for the most part, there has been an overwhelming response from the administration, the faculty and readers that we were right to allow Mr. Horowitz to exercise his rights of free speech.”
The advertisement makes several claims, including “there is no single group responsible for the crime of slavery,” “there is no single group that benefited exclusively from slavery” and “only a minority of white Americans owned slaves, while others gave their lives to free them.”
Horowitz was unavailable for comment Thursday.
The Brown Daily Herald, the daily newspaper at Providence, R.I.-based Brown University, also ran the advertisement and took a similar stance to that of The Badger Herald. Katherine Boas, the paper’s editor in chief, said there were responses from minority groups requesting apologies.
But, like Conant, she said the newspaper would also run the advertisement again.
“We felt no reason we should apologize or meet any demands because we did not do anything wrong,” she said. “Doing that would imply we had.”
Other college newspapers, though, including The State News, opted not to publish the advertisement.
The paper was slated to run the ad Tuesday, but Editor in Chief Mary Sell nixed that plan.
While advertisements and other opinions in the paper do not reflect the opinion of the staff, Sell said she not only found the ad offensive, but was concerned with how it could be perceived.
“The ad insinuated black people should be grateful of slavery for bringing them to America,” Sell said. “The issue was not The State News’ opinion on slavery reparations, rather the advertisement itself looked like a (news) story.”
The State News does run advertisements dealing with controversial issues - such as abortion.
But Sell said the reparations ad, targeting a specific group of people, was “insulting and insensitive.”
The ad certainly made Nikki O’Brien question the First Amendment. The coordinator of MSU African American student affairs for the Office of Minority Student Affairs said after reading the advertisement she found it negative and hurtful to blacks.
“I do have a strong belief that people have the right to express their opinions,” said O’Brien, who gave no opinion on whether the ad should run. “But I also have a deeper sense of commitment to my people.”
