DANNY GLOVER - FOX NEWS BLOCKS POLITICAL AD

FOX NEWS BLOCKS POLITICAL AD

A group calling itself the Center for Constitutional Rights accused the Fox News Channel Monday of refusing to allow it to buy ad time for a spot featuring Danny Glover criticizing America's policies toward Guantánamo Bay detainees. The ad, posted online at http://www.beyondguantanamo.org, was to have run in connection with a Supreme Court hearing on Wednesday in which lawyers for two Guantánamo prisoners are to argue that they have been denied habeas corpus rights. Vincent Warren, executive director of the CCR, said in a statement that FNC's rejection "is but another example of how Americans are shielded from the truth about Guantánamo and the implications of the war on terror." The ad has been accepted by the two other principal cable news channels, CNN and MSNBC, but Erin Kelly, a sales account representative for Fox News, wrote that the channel could not approve a spot alleging that the Bush administration was destroying the Constitution. "If you have documentation that it is indeed being destroyed, we can look at that." Warren called Kelly's "literal interpretation" of the spot "utterly ridiculous" and "emblematic of the political bias of Murdoch's media empire."

04/12/2007