The NY Times knows their audience.
Via MRC
The Federalist’s David Harsanyi pointed out the New York Times’s clear double standard when it comes to advertising in a Thursday post on Twitter. The writer recounted that the liberal paper “rejected an ad aimed at one religion” in 2012, but printed a full-page ad in Thursday’s edition from the far-left Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF), which blasted the “all-male, all-Roman Catholic majority” on the Supreme Court for its decision in the Hobby Lobby case.
Harsanyi linked to a March 15, 2012 item on the ultra-liberal Think Progress blog that spotlighted how the Times “rejected a full-page anti-Islam advertisement submitted by anti-Muslim activists Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer.” What Think Progress left out was the fact that Geller and Spencer’s ad was a response to a previous anti-Catholic ad from FFRF, as libertarian blogger David Volokh documented at the time:
…Here is the New York Times’ response to the [ad] submission, according to Geller:
Bob Christie, Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications for the New York Times, just called me to advise me that they would be accepting my ad, but considering the situation on the ground in Afghanistan, now would not be a good time, as they did not want to enflame an already hot situation. They will be reconsidering it for publication in “a few months.”
The Times is of course entitled to choose what ads to run. But, assuming Geller’s account of the Times’ response is correct, that response simply proves one of Geller’s points: Almost no Catholics are likely to respond violently even to harsh criticism of the Catholic Church — but enough Muslims are likely to respond violently to harsh criticism of Islam (whether the response is against the critic or against others) that the Times itself views such criticism as unsafe. There are plenty of peace-loving Muslims, but unfortunately there are also enough extremist Muslim thugs to affect what the Times is willing to publish.