Activists Cry Censorship in Fight Over Ad

A group of Bay Area activists will go to court today to try to force media giant Clear Channel Communications to post its antiwar ad on a billboard in New York’s Times Square after the company, which rejected an earlier design, said it had to be approved by the hotel where the billboard was located.

Clear Channel has faced criticism for its ties to the Bush administration and is being accused of censorship by the activists of the group, Project Billboard, a claim that Clear Channel denies.

Project Billboard intended for the ad -- which says, “Democracy is best taught by example, not by war” -- to be run in time for next month’s Republican National Convention.

It was originally illustrated with a graphic of a red, white and blue time bomb. Designers replaced that with a dove when some Clear Channel executives said the bomb design and reference to war were not appropriate for a post-Sept. 11 New York.

Paul Meyer, chief executive of Clear Channel Outdoor, said Monday that his corporation had no objection to the dove version of the ad but that it had to be approved by the New York Marriott Marquis, where the billboard was located.

“The same message with a dove image, not a bomb, is fine,” Meyer said. “We have no objection to the text. We have absolutely no political agenda. Our agenda is a profit agenda.

“I’m disappointed that they would decide to resort to the courts when we’ve agreed to the copy, subject to Marriott approval.”

Deborah Rappaport, spokeswoman for Project Billboard, said she believed Clear Channel was engaging in censorship. She linked its reception of the billboard ad with the company’s decision -- citing decency issues -- to drop popular shock jock Howard Stern, a critic of President Bush, and the move by some Clear Channel stations last year to pull what was then the nation’s top country act, the Dixie Chicks, from their playlists after member Natalie Maines said she was “ashamed” that Bush was a fellow Texan.

“It seems to me to be pretty clear that there is a clear line to be drawn from the Dixie Chicks to Howard Stern right to our doorstep,” said Rappaport.

“They seem to think they can suppress free speech, and we believe that is not appropriate or true,” she said. She added that she could not speculate on Clear Channel’s motives, but “they have a friendship with the Bushes and they’ve given a lot of money to the Bush campaign and other Republican campaigns.”

Bush has long-standing links to Texas Rangers owner Tom Hicks, a top Clear Channel executive, and Clear Channel executives have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican causes.

Rappaport said Project Billboard includes California chef Alice Waters; Laurene Powell, a philanthropist and education expert who is married to Apple Computer’s Steve Jobs; and documentary film producer Liu Baifang .

The group, Rappaport said, signed a contract with Clear Channel Spectacolor, a division of Clear Channel Outdoor, in December for an ad that was to run Aug. 2 through Nov. 2, and paid the $368,000 fee in May. She said the ad was to be the first of several intended to promote public debate on such issues as the war in Iraq, public education, the environment and dependence on overseas oil.

“This is a crucial time in the social and political history of this country,” Rappaport said. “And the basis of democracy, going back to the founding mothers and fathers, is to have a free and open public debate on the crucial issues facing this country.”

On Monday, Project Billboard’s attorney, Doug Curtis, filed a request in a New York federal court for a preliminary injunction to require Clear Channel Spectacolor to comply with the contract. Curtis said a hearing would take place today.

“Clear Channel didn’t say anything about all these other conditions,” said Curtis. “It really leaves Project Billboard high and dry. It’s a breach-of-contract case with clear free-speech implications.”

Kathleen Duffy, spokeswoman for the Marriott Marquis, said the hotel had originally understood that the billboard would be used for an ad urging people to vote. She said the hotel was surprised by the submission of an antiwar message illustrated by a bomb. “We felt the ad was political in nature and inappropriate,” Duffy said.

She said no decision had been reached on the dove replacement. She added that the hotel reserved the right to turn down “anything that has overt sexual content or is political” and that it had rejected or demanded modifications to past ads with sexual content. “We have not had a political ad presented before,” Duffy said.

Project Billboard spokesman Howard Wolfson said the Clear Channel Spectacolor contract did not mention that the hotel would have veto power.

“There are a lot of ads in Times Square that I might find objectionable and my wife might find objectionable, but that’s the nature of democracy,” said Wolfson, a communications strategist who was Hillary Rodham Clinton’s press secretary for her Democratic Senate campaign in New York and who recently worked briefly for the presidential campaign of the Democrats’ presumptive nominee, Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts.

“When you have a corporation with very clear ties to the Bush administration making decisions on free speech, it’s a problem,” Wolfson said.