In this economic climate, newspapers usually take any advertising they can get.
That’s not the case, however, for two school newspapers in the University of Wisconsin system. The Advance-Titan of UW-Oshkosh and the Pointer of UW-Stevens Point chose not to run a 12-page insert funded by the Human Life Alliance, a pro-life advocacy group based out of Minneapolis, according to the Badger Herald.
The insert contained information on topics like abortion and its relation to breast cancer, types of abortions and how to cope with an unwanted pregnancy.
UW-Stout refused to run the inserts in the past and in March 2008 Marquette University ran the advertisement because of pressure applied by the university, students and alumni, the Badger Herald reported.
Both newspapers decided not run the ads in order to avoid a controversy, and also because the insert "did not provide a service," both editors said.
“(The decision) actually had nothing to do with the content that was in there; I sat down with my advisor and advertising manager and we discussed it,” Andrew Munger, editor in chief of the Advance-Titan told the Badger Herald. “They don’t provide a service of any sort, just an ideology.”
Some pro-life advocates, like Peggy Hamill, director of Pro-Life Wisconsin, claimed the newspapers showed a liberal bias by not running the ads.
“If they consider themselves a non-biased newspaper of integrity, then common sense would tell them they should be accepting an advertising piece of such researched information,” Hamill told the paper.
Conflicting student voice showed strongly in the comments section of this story regarding the papers and the appropriateness of not running the ad.