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Steph Jespersen, the "director of advertising acceptability" for the New York Times, is being forced to answer questions from readers during the worst possible week—while some small crazy percentage of BlogAmerica™ is still exercised about how MoveOn got a 'cheap rate' for their ad about Iraq. So the poor guy has to respond to idiots writing questions like "Is the NYTimes anti-labor? Or is advertising just another kind of editorial?" and, super-nuttily, "Let's say I would like to purchase a full page ad in your newspaper and beat the #@*& out of Hillary Clinton. All proper and no foul language. Would you allow that?" These he handles with dignity and patience (the ad rate MoveOn got is a standby rate, and the conspiracy the conservative cranks were digging for was not, like, real). But then he stumbles and falls on a question from an actual non-crazy.

Someone named "Pablo" asks:

How does advertising plans to keep an eye on claims and responsibilities of advertisers? The whole thing could be taken for a ride if we just pay lip service to it. How do we know that advertisers are genuine in their claims? What's the code of conduct?

Should a scientific advisory group be created to supervise irresponsible advertising claims?

And he responds:

We expect all of our advertisers to be able to substantiate their claims, be they in an opinion ad or in a product ad. If the advertiser cannot substantiate their claims, we may ask them to modify their advertising.

In product or service advertising, if our readers find there is a difference between the advertised claims in the advertisement and how the product performs they can write or call this department. We then ask the reader to document the complaint, and we forward it to the advertiser.

The advertiser usually contacts the reader to make a satisfactory adjustment to the product.

The advertiser... contacts the reader... and adjusts the product? Really? Usually? On what planet? Presumably this is mumbo-jumbo dreamed up by the legal department to deal with culpability, but, wow, someone's living in a fantasy world.