On the other hand, the NY Times now has to go out and make arrangements to get the full price for this ad because they'd be facing a heap of trouble of they don't. The negative PR side of this is only one angle to it. Because they are a publicly-traded corporation, the real problem they face is a huge pile of massive lawsuits from shareholders who rightly wonder what the hell is going on with the management of that newspaper.
Their ad rates are a matter of public record. The fact that the ad rates aren’t a secret is what started this entire controversy in the first place. If you believe that MoveOn didn’t know they were getting a preferential rate, then I have a bridge for sale that I’d like to offer you. Everyone involved in this deal has been lying from the start, and now it has come out in the wash. MoveOn is trying to persuade the casual observer that it did not demand special treatment for its attack ad, and was just one more advertising customer. The New York Times is just trying to put an acceptable face on it to prevent every advocacy group in the country with which they disagree from demanding the same rate discount. As for the New York Times’ reputation, there hasn’t been one to lose since the mid-70s. And due to the ownership structure of the newspaper, there isn’t a damn thing shareholders can do about it.
>>>MoveOn.org may really have had no reason to know what the “normal” ad rate was. If I were to call the NY Times and they quoted a price to me for advertising, I’d have no way of knowing whether I was paying a “normal” or “discounted” rate.
I don’t know if this is what happened; but, anytime I want to run an ad in a publication or radio venue, the first thing the media outlet does is send me a media kit. The media kit lists all their ad options with pricing.