Determination
19
Minnesota
News Council
In the Matter of the Complaint of
Citizens for Community Action against the Mpls Star and Mpls Tribune
Citizens for Community Action (CCA), an anti-life group,
complained that the two papers used arbitrary standards when they refused
to print as submitted to them a paid advertisement that opposed construction
of an abortion clinic in a St. Paul neighborhood. The ad listed the
clinic's officers and sponsors, their home addresses and phone numbers,
but the papers insisted that only business addresses be used for the
clinic's officers.
Background: CCA was formed to oppose the building
of an abortion clinic by Planned Parenthood of Minnesota (PPM) in
a St. Paul neighborhood. To elicit support for its cause, CCA composed
an advertisement encouraging people to contact clinic supporters and
persuade them to change their minds on the issue. The ad listed the
names of officers and sponsors of Planned Parenthood as the names
appeared on PPM stationery, along with their home addresses and phone
numbers.
The two newspapers refused to publish the ad as submitted:
The newspapers objected to printing names, addresses and telephone
numbers of those who were not officers of PPM, and asserted that the
addresses given for the officers should be the PPM business address
unless prior consent was received for using home addresses. The newspapers
offered to print the ad with those changes.CCA refused to make the
changes and complained that the reasons for the ad's rejection were
arbitrary.
Determination of the Council: A newspaper
has the legal right to accept or reject any advertisement, but the
paper should establish fair and reasonable standards for advertising
and should apply these standards uniformly.
The newspapers did not clearly define their standards
regarding the definition of "private persons" whose right to privacy
should be protected in advocacy advertisements. The publisher's claim
of right to privacy for the PPM sponsors, as distinguished from the
organization's officers, is rejected: The sponsors' names appeared
with the officers' names on the organization stationery, and when
citizens take a public position in support of an organization functioning
in the public arena, they must expect to accept whatever praise or
criticism this position brings from members of the public. To this
extent, the complaint against the newspapers is upheld. The CCA, however,
should not have arbitrarily used the male spouse's name without discretion.
By so doing, they unduly implicated the spouses of women who participated
as individuals, and whose husbands were genuinely private persons
as regards PPM.
October 15, 1976
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