I have been happy to support the efforts of Bob Owens at Confederate Yankee to expose the fraudulent stories of Scott Thomas Beauchamp since the first items from his fiction piece, “Shock Troops”, were published by The New Republic.
Since TNR refuses to retract the story and stands by the made-up lies about our troops from Mr. Beauchamp, I am now happy to join Bob in urging that those who advertise at TNR feel the pressure. That’s what the marketplace of truthful ideas is all about. Bob sums it up well.
The New Republic doesn’t have an obligation to support the troops, or support the war in Iraq. It does have an obligation to retract stories for which they can provide no support.
Canwest MediaWorks, the Canadian company that owns The New Republic, does not have an obligation to decide the editorial policies of The New Republic, but it does have an obligation to discipline all editors who have refused to act ethically, who have misled readers, and who have attacked the military for defending itself from proven falsehoods and gross exaggerations (email Canwest Global CFO John McGuire at jmaguire@canwest.com, and be polite but firm).
We cannot force The New Republic to behave honorably, but we can make their dishonesty come at a price.
Here is the list of TNR advertisers. I join Bob in asking anyone affiliated with these organizations to urge their management to pull advertising from The New Republic.
| Alfred A. Knopf | Allstate | Amazon.com | American Gas Station | |
| American Petroleum Institute | AstroZeneca (current issue) | Auto Alliance | ||
| Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (current issue) | BP (current issue) | Chevron (current issue) | CNN | |
| FLAME (current issue) | Federal Express | The Financial Times | Focus Features | |
| Ford Motor Company | Freddie Mac | GM | Grove Atlantic | |
| HBO | Harvard University Press | History Channel | Hoover Institution (current issue) | |
| MetLife | Microsoft | Mortage Bankers | Nuclear Energy Institute | |
| The New School | New York Times | Novartis | Palgrave Macmillan (current issue) | |
| Simon & Shuster | John Templeton Foundation (current issue) | University of Chicago Press | University Press of Kansas (current issue) | |
| U.S. Telecom | Visa (current issue) | The Wall Street Journal | Warner Brothers | |
| Warner Brothers Home Video | W.W. Norton | Wyeth Laboratories | Yale University Press (current issue) |
This is another example of the corrupt media rearing its ugly head. The dirty little secret is you can’t rely on advertising alone. You have to have people reading your publication or the advertisers will go somewhere else!!!
It really is a sorry state of affairs when the British press does a better job of upholding journalistic standards that Americans wrote the book on so long ago!