Free Speech Victory: MTA Board rules political ads will continue to run

Contrary to the conventional "wisdom," the MTA board did not change its ad policy and block political advertising because of our anti-jihad ad. Despite critical media and the howling mob of miscreants, political, cause-related ads will run. The agenda of the MTA meeting was to "overhaul subway ad policies," according to big media (ABC, WSJ). The good news is that the enemedia was wrong. There was no such overhaul.

All political ads will have to have a disclaimer, but as long as this is applied evenhandedly to all ads, not just to ones the MTA or PC police or sharia enforcers don't like, it's fine. Fascist Islamic supremacists like Mona Eltahawy will have to invest in a whole lot more spray paint, because we're going to keep speaking out for freedom and truth.

My coverage of the #OWS freak show here: #Savage Enemies of Free Speech Descend, Disrupt MTA Board Meeting Considering Ad Policy Overhaul

MTA Board Tweaks  Advertising Standards

At its regularly scheduled meeting today, the MTA Board modified the MTA’s Advertising Standards, which were last addressed
by the Board in 1997.

The
modification was prompted by a recent federal court decision that
determined that MTA’s “no demeaning standard
– a standard that had prohibited ads containing “images or information
that demean an individual or group of individuals on account of race,
color, religion, national origin, ancestry, gender, age, disability or
sexual orientation – was unconstitutional.  

In
determining how best to respond to the court’s decision, the MTA
considered limiting the use of ad spaces in and on
buses, subways, trains and stations across the board to ads of a
commercial nature.  However, many board members believed that ad space
in our transportation system, in addition to serving as a very important
source of supplemental revenues to support transportation,
should continue to serve as a vehicle for a wide variety of
communications, including ads of a non-commercial nature that express
viewpoints on matters of public concern. 

Accordingly,
the MTA Board has decided to continue its policy of permitting both
commercial and noncommercial advertisements,
including ads expressing viewpoints on issues of the day. Of course,
paid viewpoint ads contain the views of their sponsors, and we want to
make sure that our customers do not confuse them with expression of
MTA’s views. To underscore the point, our revised
advertising policy will require sponsors who submit viewpoint ads on
political, religious or moral issues or related matters to include a
disclaimer on each such ad that makes this clear. Each such ad will be
required to prominently include this disclaimer:

ADVERTISEMENT

This is a paid advertisement sponsored by [Sponsor]. The display of this advertisement does not imply MTA’s endorsement
of any views expressed.

To
be clear, the MTA does not believe the First Amendment compels the MTA
to open up its ad spaces in this way to a wide
range of expressive communications. MTA could, for example, adopt a
narrower commercially oriented ad policy, one that limited the range of
ads it will display to those selling a product or service, and by doing
so, avoid having to run demeaning or divisive
ads such as the AFDI ad that resulted in litigation. But the MTA for
decades has permitted its ad spaces to serve a broader communicative
function than mere commercial advertising, and the Board, today
reaffirms that tradition of tolerating a wide spectrum
of types of ads, including ads that express views on a wide range of
public matters. 

With
that choice also come First Amendment limitations that constrain the
MTA’s ability to disallow particular ads because
their messages are uncivil or divisive. We had thought this did not
mean having to run divisive ads that demeaned others, but the recent
litigation tells us otherwise. A cost of opening our ad space to a
variety of viewpoints on matters of public concern is
that we cannot readily close that space to certain advertisements on
account of their expression of divisive or even venomous messages.  

We
deplore such hate messages and remain hopeful that the vast majority of
advertisers in our buses,subways, trains and
stationswill remain responsible and respectful of their audiences. And
when, as there inevitably will be, a very few sponsors of ads stray from
civility, we have every confidence that our customers will understand
that in our enlightened civil democracy, the
answer to distasteful and uncivil speech is more, and more civilized,
speech.    

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