Posted on 04/08/2005 9:35:01 AM PDT by Fierce Allegiance
LOS ANGELES - General Motors Corp. says it will stop advertising in the Los Angeles Times, at least temporarily, because of dealer concerns over "factual errors and misrepresentations" in the newspaper's articles and editorials.
The newspaper, which is owned by Tribune Co., will review coverage that prompted the complaints from the world's largest automaker, said Times spokesman David Garcia.
GM spokesman Brian Akre would not identify which stories or editorials the company objected to, but said it had been a series of reports over the past several months. "We made our objections known to the Times and we prefer to keep those private," he said Friday by telephone from Detroit.
He said the decision was made this week because of "strongly voiced objections from our dealers in Southern California regarding factual errors and misrepresentations in the Times editorial coverage."
"We recognize and support the news media's freedom to report and editorialize as they see fit," Akre said. "Likewise, GM and its retailers are free to spend our advertising dollars where we see fit."
The ban covers corporate advertising, not individual dealer ads in the classified section, he said. The company did not say the cancellation was permanent.
"There are ongoing discussions, which is all we can say," Akre said. "This is an extremely rare occurrence."
Garcia said in Friday's editions that the newspaper "will look into any complaints GM has about inaccuracy or misrepresentation and will make any appropriate corrections."
On Wednesday, the paper published a column by auto critic Dan Neil that called GM, which has struggled recently with sluggish sales, "a morass of a business case" and called for the "impeachment" of two executives. Among other criticisms, Neil said GM "utterly missed the boat on hybrid gas-electric technology" while speeding up production of SUVs.
Neil won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for criticism, cited by the judges for "one-of-a-kind" reviews of automobiles blending technical expertise with "offbeat humor and astute cultural observations."
When asked about columns by Neil, Akre said, "It was not any one column or story."
Neither GM nor the newspaper, which has a daily circulation of 900,000, would say how much the automaker spends on its Times ads.
There are eight GM lines doing business in Southern California: Chevrolet, Pontiac, GMC, Cadillac, Saab, Hummer, Saturn and Buick.
Akre said he didn't know how many dealers had complained.
The buck is mightier than the pen.
It is a good trend - hold people accountable for their doings.
Love it, spanking them with the greenback
Someone needs to check into their trumped up circulation numbers.
Nice to see the LAT death spiral is continuing unabated.
A polite form of the so-called bitch-slap. Nice!
NYSlimes should be next :)
Journalistic equivalent of Enron.
I added a keyword FYI, LOL!
Not only that, but 900K sounds awfully low for an area the size of LA. Add to that the circulation that should exist outside of LA (SF, San Diego, Las Vegas, etc.) as well as the thousands of people commuting through LA daily from around the world and 900K looks like chump change. Effectively, nobody reads that rag.
900k is about right. It is only 36% white now.
I'm starting to think that newpapers operate at a loss and are being propped up by other divisions of the media empires. Who needs a newspaper when you have the net and custom news ?
I haven't subscribed to a paper for ten years and dumped tv in '97. I'm more informed now than I ever was.
BTW, Do you think President Clinton will win another term in spite of monica?
I threw in another. lol.
At least GM is starting to do something right.
The LA Times trys to give their fishwrap free to me once or twice a year and I refuse to allow it in my home. lol
I've got high hopes!
(Does the LA Times have the laziest and most biased staff of writers within the MSM? You be the judge.)
I wonder how much of that 900k is free newspapers given away at hotels and on airlines?
I can specifically remember the period during the mid 80s when the Slimes started to move left. They've been heading for failure ever since.
I think they are about on par with the rest of the MSM for bias and laziness.
Revenue from classified ads props up newspapers.
at our private university in west Los Angeles, on campus racks of LA Times were replaced long ago by the students choice Wall Street Journal and NY Times...the LA Times is just not that sharp anymore, that old gray whore is finally dead...
circ numbers have been nosediving for years
I brought an errant stack of NY Times into my local Starbucks the other day (it was in the bushes)....then wondered, if there were 20 copies delivered per Starbucks, how much circulation-inflation is going on there?
6376 US Stores x 20 copies each = 127,520 copies
I mean, I have seen probably one person BUY an LA Times in five years....but most just grab a paper to read while they are playing hookie from work.
Their articles on the Swift Boat Vets last year were extremely biased. They completely left out the most important charges that the Swift Boat Vets made against Kerry, and essentially whitewashed Kerry's treasonous anti-war activities and his fabricated testimony in front of the Senate Foreign Relations committee. I lost any shred of remaining respect for the LA Times at that point.
And I get to feel good about myself for saving the trees. lol
Are we allowed to post entire articles from the LA Times? I think you're supposed to excerpt and link to those articles.
Over the last decade felling trees by the acre and buying ink by the barrel became a huge financial liability instead of serving as a barrier to entry that keeps common people in their place.
It's called "eBay" and it's already destroying classified ads around the world.
When your local paper wants $50 for any for-sale ad, regardless of type of object being sold (like a $100 radio), is it any wonder that people are turning to eBay?
Gotta agree with the guy, the G6 is disappointing POS.
If this comes directly from the Times it should be removed. It's illegal to publish an entire article from them.
Sign me up for the FREEPER boycott of NBCCBSABCCNN advertisers...
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