In a dizzying display of reverse-spin, magazine industry leaders are declaring a First Amendment victory over Chrysler Corp. - at a time when they could be declaring war.
Earlier this week, the carmaker dropped a controversial policy that required magazines to let Chrysler preview editorial content before it bought ads in them. But the policy change is little more than a public relations ploy - one that makes both sides look good without any substantive change.
Chrysler had come under fire earlier this year after a Wall Street Journal article publicized its explicit, written advertising code that amounted to advertiser-imposed prior restraint.
Only after the practice was made public, the magazine industry, as represented by the American Society of Magazine Editors and the Magazine Publishers of America, retaliated with a lofty statement.
Five months in the making, the pronouncement denounced such previews. This week, the heads of both groups declared Chrysler's decision a win for their side. But is it?
Chrysler spokesman Mike Aberlich, quoted in Wednesday's Journal about the announcement, said the company would still promulgate and enforce its own "editorial guidelines" to keep ads away from articles Chrysler considers controversial. And Chrysler's tolerance for controversy is pretty low; for instance, the company pulled ads from the coming-out episode of the ABC sitcom Ellen.
But the magazine types glossed over such details. "What this change of policy by Chrysler is doing," said Frank Lalli, president of the ASME, "is reverting to a system that has been in place for many years, which is trusting the editors and publishers to produce magazines that - whatever the subject - stories are done in good taste and intelligence."
But reverting to the old system is no solution at all. It merely means employing a more refined, less obvious version of Chrysler's ham-handed approach. The most insidious practice is what Lalli termed "early warnings," where publishers call advertisers in advance to allow them to move their ads out of an upcoming issue that might not be to their liking.
"It's just good business and courtesy," said MPA president Don Kummerfeld, as he brushed off any notion of wrong-doing, adding, "Magazines are written for the readers, not advertisers."
While the warnings are not nearly as egregious as Chrysler's explicit pre-publication censorship, it still blurs the line significantly between editorial and advertising.
"It's nice that one company has thought better of this sort of advance censorship routine," said Howard Kurtz, media writer for The Washington Post, "but the industry as a whole still seems to be playing this game, and too many magazines seem to be playing along. Chrysler is a high-profile example of a company bowing to criticism, but in a larger sense, nothing has changed."
"I believe that Chrysler is the only one that had a written policy," said Jean Halliday, Detroit bureau chief for Advertising Age, the weekly trade magazine of the advertising industry. "The car companies, especially the Detroit Big Three, are conservative, and there may be some kind of unspoken policy similar to Chrysler's."
A spokeswoman for Ford Motor Company said, "We have never had a written policy saying they have to give us advance notice. Of course, when we make our advertising decisions ... we look at content."
Chrysler's high-handed behavior - and the magazine industry's lukewarm response to it - are even more troubling given that magazines are now operating from a position of unusual strength. Magazines account for 17 percent of advertising spending and are enjoying robust growth, said the MPA's Kummerfeld.
"Magazine advertising's never been stronger than it is now," he said. Therefore, if there ever was a time magazines should be immune to advertiser arm-twisting, it should be now, he added, apparently blind to the implications of his statement.
Also, Chrysler is among the most vanilla of advertisers, targeting the mainstream of the mainstream to sell its products. "Even with the other policy in place," Lalli said, "they only shifted 10 ads last year, out of $260 million [in ad sales]."
If 10 ads is all it takes to get the magazine industry's attention, then the magazine industry sure comes cheap.
