Rejected Radio Spot Raises Eyebrows

New York Times

Rejected Radio Spot Raises Eyebrows
By STEPHEN LABATON

WASHINGTON, June 7

The New Israel Fund, an international foundation based here that raises money to support religious tolerance and civil liberties in Israel, has been rejected as a program underwriter by public radio stations in New York and San Francisco, officials at those stations and the fund say.

A senior advertising executive at a company representing the San Francisco radio station, KQED, wrote recently in an e-mail message that the rejection of the underwriting credit by the station came in response to listener complaints about National Public Radio's news coverage of the Middle East.

But the e-mail message was disputed by KQED officials, who said its contents were untrue, and by the advertising executive's boss, who said, after hearing complaints from KQED, that the e-mail was ''the result of a miscommunication.'' Officials at KQED and WNYC in New York said that they rejected the underwriting credit, or financial support in exchange for an advertisement, because it was the kind of advocacy advertising that they routinely decline.

The decision to reject the underwriting credit comes as the stations and NPR face increasing pressure about their coverage of the Middle East. In recent weeks Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides taxpayer money to the stations, has repeated the criticism by others that coverage by NPR is not always balanced.

The advertisement is being broadcast on WETA, a public radio station in Washington, and in the New York area on Air America and on WQXR, a radio station owned by The New York Times Company.

The rejected underwriting credit said support for the station ''comes from the New Israel Fund, promoting equality and social justice for all Israelis'' and directs listeners to the organization's Web site, www.nif.org. An earlier version contained a clause directing listeners to visit the fund's Web site ''for information on Israel's disengagement from Gaza,'' but that phrase was deleted after it was challenged by some stations, including WETA, for running afoul of their positions against advocacy ads.

Jeffrey A. Dvorkin, the ombudsman at NPR, said he could not comment on the particular advertising policies of public radio stations. But he said that public radio should, as a general principle, strive to take advertisements from the widest possible range of sources, including advocacy groups, within the boundaries of government rules.

''Many listeners who hear a message from Wal-Mart on NPR think that it means that NPR is supporting Wal-Mart, when, in fact, it is just the other way around,'' Mr. Dvorkin said. ''Underwriting now has such political overtones, that accepting or rejecting money from a controversial funder will always muddy the waters around public radio's independence.''

Two months ago the Corporation for Public Broadcasting appointed two ombudsmen to monitor public radio and television, provoking station officials to support a resolution criticizing the corporation and urging it to ''refrain from interfering in constitutionally protected content decisions.'' And late last year Mr. Tomlinson contacted a media research organization about examining the Middle East coverage of NPR. Eben Peck, a spokesman at the corporation, said it is still considering whether to commission such a study.

The New Israel Fund is a 26-year-old organization that in the last year issued grants of about $20 million for social justice and cultural pluralism programs. Over the years it has provided $130 million to more than 700 nonprofit groups in Israel involved in such projects as the elimination of discrimination against Israeli Arabs, the promotion of the peaceful co-existence of Jews and Arabs, and the sponsorship of programs for women's rights and those of marginalized communities like, for example, Ethiopian and Sephardic Jews.

The organization's president is Peter Edelman, the former dean of the Georgetown University Law Center and a former assistant secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services who resigned in 1996 to protest President Clinton's welfare policy. ''We're disappointed and a little perplexed because the message is a pretty mainstream message,'' Mr. Edelman said. ''Ours is a message being stated and endorsed by a wide swath of organizations.''

Executives at KQED and WNYC said that the underwriting credit was rejected because the stations have longstanding policies against sponsorships from advocacy organizations. But KQED officials also said that they based their decision on an ad submitted by their agent that had not been approved by the New Israel Fund and that made a reference to ''New Israel Fund's support for Israel's disengagement from Gaza.'' They said that that phrase would have violated their rule against advocacy ads, but could not say whether they would broadcast an underwriting credit without it.

''What we see here is a slew of mistakes'' by our agent, said Donald W. Derheim, vice president of marketing at KQED. ''It's clear that the ad we reviewed advocated an issue with a point of view.''

Jennifer Houlihan, a spokeswoman at WNYC, said: ''We don't take advocacy spots from anyone. This is a longstanding policy.''

In an e-mail message sent on Thursday to the marketing company representing the New Israel Fund, a senior advertising executive at the company that represents public radio and television stations said that KQED rejected the underwriting credit because of ''listener complaints about NPR's coverage'' of the Middle East.

''Because of the number of listener comments, the station feels this isn't a good time to run the NIF schedule,'' wrote the agent, David Zellhart, the senior official for the Western United States for National Public Broadcasting, a company formed by public radio and television stations that acts as the buying agent for underwriting credits for the nation's largest stations. On May 6 Mr. Zellhart wrote that ''KQED/SF is ok with this script,'' and he repeated it in an e-mail message on May 16.

The e-mail messages were disclosed by the New Israel Fund.

Executives at KQED disputed the account of Mr. Zellhart, their agent. They said that the underwriting had never been accepted, but had been submitted for review. Mr. Zellhart did not respond to messages left at his home or California office.

Donald Ershow, the chief operating officer of National Public Broadcasting and Mr. Zellhart's boss, said that Mr. Zellhart had ''misinterpreted the station's rationale'' in his e-mail message to the marketing agent for the New Israel Fund. He declined to comment about the two e-mail messages Mr. Zellhart sent in May in which he told the agent for the New Israel Fund that KQED had accepted the underwriting credits.

Mr. Ershow spoke in an interview late Monday after KQED officials had earlier in the day complained to him about Mr. Zellhart's e-mail messages. National Public Broadcasting is partly owned by a group of public radio and television stations including KQED.