If an ad is clearly insulting, you run it at your peril. Begleiter said context and presentation can make a difference when a newspaper decides to run a controversial ad. That's the route Frank Graham, editor of the weekly Providence American, said he would take. Graham acknowledged one of the hard realities of journalism, namely that advertising provides the revenue needed to keep a newspaper operating. F or Marcia Grann O'Brien, editor of the biweekly Narragansett Times, controversy is most often raised in her paper's Viewpoint and Letters to the Editor section.
People have a First Amendment right to express their point of view.
There's another side to the story and, whether you agree with it or not, it deserves to be told. She's not involved in decisions on advertising copy for her paper, but O'Brien recalled a time she intervened with the publication of a paid advertisement. Begleiter has found that David Horowitz, author of the controversial ad that ran in the Herald, and others posing highly controversial views repeatedly target student newspapers. Bradley Smith, author of anti-Semitic Holocaust revisionist ads, has admitted he prefers college papers and aims to stir debate on campus and in the media. Brian Pernicone, editor of URI's student newspaper, A Good Five Cent Cigar, said his paper wasn't offered the Horowitz ad, but he believes he and the staff would have decided to run it if it had been submitted.