NYTimes ad mysteriously disappears

Apologies if this item has already appeared; I couldn't find it in a search.

Anyway, apparently the anti-war group Not in Our Name had taken an add out in the New York Times that was meant to run on Friday, Jan. 21st.  Payment for the ad had been accepted, they had a contract as well as a confirmation number.  Then on the appointed day the add mysteriously didn't run.  They contacted the advertising department and found that

The advertising department were themselves deeply surprised by this, and have not been able to explain what happened. In fact, we were told that to their knowledge this had never happened before.

Continued below fold

At the same time, the Times lead editorial said that this should be a time of legitimacy and acceptance for the President -- and that this was especially something that the opposition has to come to terms with.

So it seems like this thing came from the "higher ups."  

I am getting all this information from an email I received from the group, and I apologize that I am posting it a little late.  Not In Our Name has not yet sent an update.  But I think that the rest of what they say in their email is worth people knowing about:

It is unacceptable that we do not yet know why something that "has never happened before" happened -- a full page paid ad, accepted and slotted in, did not run. This is especially so when the content of the ad, the need to resist the course that this administration has set, is so important to the people of this country and the world. There needs to be an investigation of what went wrong and why. If it was just an honest mistake, we expect that the Times itself would want to know why in order to prevent it from occurring again.

The Times has given us a new ad reservation number and assured us that the ad will now run on this Sunday. However, there is the danger of it being buried in the back of the first section. This would be another way of marginalizing and rendering relatively invisible the voices of conscience and dissent.

NION goes on to request emails to the editor urging that the ad should be given prominent coverage (that it shoudl be in the 1st ten pages or in the Week in Review section).  But since I'm posting this late, I won't include that part.

Also, I am in London right now and won't be able to purchase a copy of this Sunday's NYTimes (too expensive!. . . and the dollar too weak) but it would be interesting to see what has happened.  More importantly, however, we should expect to hear some kind of explanation from the Times for its rather louche behaviour.