Sweetheart deal for moveon.org?

Moveon.org bought a full page ad in the New York Times questioning the integrity of General Petraeus, accusing him of lying in a report he had not yet even given when the ad was written with the headline, “General Petraeus or General Betray Us? (I think a new word has to be invented here- we have “chicken hawk” for those who call for war, but never fought themselves; we need a word for those who loathe the military, and yet believe they know more about war than those who have put their bodies in harm’s way to defend them) Now it appears that “The Paper of Record” gave Moveon.org a 65% discount on the standard advertising rates for such an ad.

According to ABC News , Moveon paid $65,000 for the ad- but the New York Post quotes Abbe Serphos, director of public relations for the Times as saying "the open rate for an ad of that size and type is $181,692." The Post continues , “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.”

I’m sure there is some simple explanation for this other than that Moveon got a discount because the NYTimes was sympathetic to their position. That just couldn’t be; we all know there’s no such thing as media bias, or that if there is, it happens only at Fox News.

UPDATE

September 24 I quote from this article : “After two weeks of denials, the New York Times acknowledged that it should not have given a discount to MoveOn.Orgfor a full-page advertisement General David H. Petraeus.”

“The liberal advocacy group should have paid $142,000 for the ad calling the U.S. commander in Iraq "General Betray Us," not $65,000, the paper's public editor wrote yesterday.

Clark Hoyt said in his column that MoveOn was not entitled to the cheaper "standby" rate for advertising that can run any time over the following week because the Times did promise that the ad would run Sept. 10, the day Petraeus began his congressional testimony. "We made a mistake," Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis was quoted as saying.

The Times also violated its own advertising policy, which bars "attacks of a personal nature," Hoyt reported.”