NY Times Gave MoveOn Huge Discount; Rudy Wants Same

The "Betray us" ad that MoveOn.org ran in the NY Times on Monday should have cost the organization $167,000 according to the Times own rate card. It now turns out that MoveOn paid only $65,000. The Times gave them a huge discount to call our commanding general a traitor.

Today Rudy Giuliani has asked the Times for the same discount in order to run a response ad in tomorrow's paper. This is what Rudy had to say:

"We believe, unlike Hillary Clinton, that General Petraeus is telling the truth," the former mayor of New York told reporters this afternoon, in Atlanta, Georgia, while asking MoveOn, Hillary Clinton, and the New York Times to apologize to General Petraeus. "We believe that her attack on General Petraeus was a follow-up to the MoveOn attack," Giuliani said.

"Character assassination" is one thing when it's politician on politician, Giuliani said. But you don't do that to a general. "You have no right to...put his integrity into question."

No word yet on the Times' response.

James Taranto adds this:

If a company sells an ad worth $167,000 for $65,000, then, that would be an in-kind contribution of $102,000. Corporate contributions to PACs are illegal under the campaign finance laws the Times itself has long championed: "Corporations and labor organizations are prohibited from making contributions in connection with federal elections," according to the FEC. (A corporation may set up and administer a "separate segregated fund," or a corporate PAC, which receives contributions from people associated with the company, but it may not contribute to its own SSF or any other federally registered PAC.)