Our policies toward political ads strive to be fair and open

By Leon Cohen and Elana Kahn-Oren

As readers can see from the letters to the editor published below, The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle has received complaints about the full-page advertisements — or, in one case, one ad taking up three full pages — purchased by the Republican Jewish Coalition and published in recent Chronicle issues.

We have not received so far any similar complaints about the full-page advertisements purchased by the National Jewish Democratic Council or other Jewish Democratic groups and printed in the same issues.

Still, that we have received so many objections from any side of this bitterly contested presidential election means that we need to explain a few things about The Chronicle’s policies regarding political advertisements.

We are a non-profit publication owned and operated by a non-profit organization, the Milwaukee Jewish Federation. And the law is very clear on what non-profit publications may and may not do when it comes to political candidates and elections.

Unlike for-profit publications, we may not endorse political candidates directly or give the appearance of doing so indirectly. Therefore we accept advertisements from both major political parties and whatever minor political parties may want to purchase them, and we do so on the same basis as we do for non-political advertising, provided they are identified as paid political advertising. The RJC ads that raised such ire were clearly identified as such; they did not remotely resemble our news pages.

We have the right to reject any ads, political or otherwise, that do not meet standards of taste, or that come from groups that seek to work against our purpose as a non-profit organization, which is to work for the well-being of the Jewish community. (That last principle would justify our rejecting a political ad from an American Nazi Party, for example.)

That does not mean that we have the freedom to reject a political ad whose message a majority of our readers may not like or may disagree with — as long as we are convinced that the message is part of the legitimate political debate and seeks to advocate what the advertisers believe in good faith would be helpful for the Jewish community.

We as a Jewish community newspaper strive to reflect the full range of views held by people in the Jewish community. That is why we recently published dueling opinion articles by supporters of President Bush and Sen. John Kerry; and why when we profiled campaign activists we included members of the Green and Libertarian as well as Democratic and Republican parties.

As much as some community members may not want to believe it, Jewish Republicans and conservatives do exist. After all, nearly 20 percent of our community voted for President Bush in the 2000 election. These Jews deserve to be represented and covered in our news and opinion pages and to have the right to purchase ads to advocate their views.

We believe in what is a guiding principle of freedom of speech: the best way to deal with speech one doesn’t like is more speech, not less. We seek to encourage community discussion, which is why we not only run the ads but also are printing letters from people who disagree with the message of the ads; and we would have been willing to print letters objecting to the Democratic ads if any such letters had come in before Election Day.

In fact, we know of a Jewish newspaper in another community, the American Jewish World in Minneapolis, which pointed out that readers objecting to the content of the RJC ads may take their complaints directly to the RJC and its executive director, Matthew Brooks.

The hard truth remains that The Chronicle and every other Jewish newspaper in the country need advertising revenue to provide their service to you, the Jewish community. Without such revenue, to have a Jewish press at all means money must come from the local federations’ campaigns, therefore diminishing funds available for the vital educational, social and humanitarian services also funded by those campaigns.

Finally, there is one thing we can do vis-à-vis elections: We can encourage our readers to go out and vote for whichever candidates and parties you believe will best represent you and your vision of what your community and country should be. We urge you to take all the ideas and information that we and other communications media have tried to convey to you and exercise your right to vote and make your voice heard next week.