“Only through the growth of advertising did the press achieve independence,” wrote Francis Williams, a former editor of the Labour-supporting Daily Herald in 1957.
At that time he was making the point that “the daily press would never have come to existence as a force in public and social life if it had not been for the need of men of commerce to advertise”.
Most newspapers and, latterly, websites have been reliant on advertising revenue ever since – for the Guardian it accounts for around half of our revenue. But that doesn’t mean the Guardian would publish any advertisement, notwithstanding the rules of the Advertising Standards Authority.
On 11 August 2014, the Guardian published – in print only – a full-page advertisement “organised, produced and paid for by This World: The Values Network, the world’s leading organisation promoting universal Jewish values in culture, media and politics”.
This advertisement featured Elie Wiesel, a Nobel peace laureate. It was headed: “Jews rejected child sacrifice 3,500 years ago. Now it’s Hamas’ turn”. Wiesel wrote that he had seen “Muslim children used as human shields” and called for an end to “child sacrifice”.
It is a controversial advertisement by any standards and the Times of London refused to publish it, although newspapers in the US did so, including the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Roy Greenslade, the Guardian’s media columnist, posted on his blog that the Times would not be carrying the advertisement because a spokesman said “the opinion being expressed is too strong and too forcefully made and will cause concern amongst a significant number of Times readers”. In that post on 8 August he disclosed that the Guardian intended to publish. There have been more than 350 emails, letters and calls of complaint to the Guardian so far condemning the advertisement. There was also an open letter from the Stop the War Coalition, which claimed to have 140,000 signatures. A few wrote in support of publication.
One reader, who didn’t, wrote, before it was published: “I am writing to express my serious shock and concern that the Guardian plans to run an advert which was rightly rejected by the Times earlier last week: the ‘human shield’ advert from Elie Wiesel and Shmuley Boteach [executive director of This World]. I understand that running the advert does not mean that the Guardian agrees with it. However, this advert is so offensive, for reasons outlined below, that I cannot understand how the decision to run it was made and I hope you will reconsider.
“In this advert comparisons are made between the genocide of Jewish children during the Holocaust and the killing of children in Gaza through Israeli military aggression. The death of Gazan children caused by Israeli attacks is blamed on Hamas. As an article in the Guardian on 24 July points out, it is often stated by the Israeli establishment that Hamas uses civilians as human shields, but this is disputed by many. As the author points out, even if Hamas does operate from civilian areas, that does not justify Israel targeting and killing civilians (for instance by bombing schools and hospitals). A comparison is also made in the advert between the Nazis and Hamas.
“Over thirty members of my family (who were Czech-Jews) were murdered in Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust. I consider that Wiesel and Boteach make these comparisons to the Holocaust, and between Hamas and the Nazis, in an attempt to justify the killing of Palestinian children and shift the blame for their deaths on to Hamas. I find this so appalling I cannot understand how you could print it … I have been a Guardian reader for many years, but your decision to run this advert means I will no longer be buying your paper, and I will be contacting everyone I know to ask them to do the same.”
Why did the Guardian publish? I have reviewed the complaints and spoken either personally or by email to members of the commercial and editorial staff who made the decision.
The advertisement was booked through the Guardian US office on 1 August. The Guardian has no policy, published or otherwise, about the basis on which ads are accepted or rejected other than that contained in the terms and conditions of the contract.
While it was clear that the advertisement might attract a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority, it was judged to be within their rules by the Guardian’s legal department, therefore the final approval rested with editorial.
After discussing the advertisement with some senior editors, Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian’s editor-in-chief, said that while it was very difficult, on balance he decided that it should run for the following reasons:
Advertisers ought to be able to pay to place material in newspapers which the newspapers themselves disagree with or even deplore.
He believed there was a strong argument in terms of freedom of speech “which is doubtless why the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, New York Observer and Washington Post all printed it”.
It’s in the name of Elie Wiesel, a Nobel laureate and considerable public figure.
The claim that Hamas has been using women and children as human shields - thereby “sacrificing” them - has been made repeatedly on the Israeli side of the conflict.
The advertisement was judged to be within the ASA guidelines.
He also said that the Guardian had traditionally always believed in giving people a voice in circumstances where other newspapers “would run a mile”.
“I think most Guardian readers expect that from us and appreciate it. We don’t agree with it [the advertisement], and don’t endorse it - like much of the advertising in the paper,” he said.
“JS Mill said the best response to bad argument was good argument. It was useful to see how a hugely respected figure, Elie Wiesel, allows his name to be used in such advertising. But I am saddened that, for some readers, it appears that the amazing, brave reporting by Guardian journalists, staffers and stringers in Gaza, to get the suffering and news out of there, at risk to their own lives, counts for less than one advertisement - of the sort that allows us to do such reporting. So it’s a shame that the controversy over the advertisement eclipsed the unflinching work that the Guardian has done in being the world’s eyes and ears, including going to the hospitals where the injured and dead children were being taken.”
Of their very nature advocacy advertisements pose some of the most difficult publication decisions, especially in areas such as the Israel/Palestine conflict, although the culture in the US encourages a more robust view in favour of publication.
When the left-of-centre magazine The Nation was heavily criticised in 2006 for taking advertisements from Flame, described by The Nation as an anti-Palestinian organisation, the vice-president of advertising wrote to a correspondent: “We ran it [the ad] because The Nation’s policy on advertising acceptability starts with the presumption that ‘we will accept advertising even if the views expressed are repugnant to those of the editors.’ (And let’s be clear: the editors find the views of Flame quite repugnant.) We do impose limits on commercial advertisements, barring, for example, those that are false, lurid or patently fraudulent, illegal or libellous. However, ads that present a political point of view are considered to fall under our editorial commitment to freedom of speech and, perforce, granted the same latitude we claim for our own views. But we do reserve the right to denounce the content of such ads, just as our editorials denounce ideas we abhor. And that is what we do here.”
The Guardian has published a number of appeals from charities for aid for the people of Gaza, including an appeal by Save the Children for a permanent ceasefire on 6 August, which named 373 children who had been killed there between 8 July and 3 August. It is interesting to note that the Israeli Broadcasting Authority rejected a radio advertisement made by the Human rights group B’Tselem, which also named many children who had died, as “too controversial”.
An article on the Advertising Age website that examines the issues of advocacy advertising concludes: “Because of its inherently political content – either tacit or overt – advocacy advertising cannot be judged simply in terms of whether it achieves a sponsor’s objectives. Its impact needs to be analysed in the larger context of the social responsibility of advertisers and its contribution to a balanced discussion of controversial issues.”
Each advertisement has clearly got to be decided on a case-by-case basis, bearing in mind not just specific criteria but the context of the times as well. I entirely support the argument that freedom of expression means the freedom to offend. On that basis I don’t think it was wrong to run an advertisement that expressed a viewpoint, with which the Guardian has no sympathy, about the alleged use of human shields by Hamas, which the organisation has strenuously denied. But there are always limits.
I think the Guardian should have rejected the language of the advertisement and attempted to negotiate change with the authors, something they indicated to the Times that they might consider.
I agree with the readers that whatever the intention, the biblical language, the references to child sacrifice, all evoke images of that most ancient of antisemitic tropes: the blood libel. The authors may believe that they have steered a careful course by aiming these matters at an organisation, Hamas, rather than all Palestinians, but the association is there. If an advertisement was couched in similar terms but the organisation named was the IDF rather than Hamas, I can’t imagine the Guardian would run it – I certainly hope it wouldn’t. I think that’s the issue.