RAGMAG previously reported on the MoveOn.org ad flack here.

After fielding rampant criticism over the controversial MoveOn.org ad that critcized General David Petreaus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, the New York Times admitted that it should not have given a discount for the ad.

The full page ad, an expensive venture which normally would have cost $142,000, instead cost the liberal advocacy group $65,000.

 In other words, less than half.

We made a mistake,” Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis said.

MoveOn.org, said they were unaware of the discount and promised to send the Times $77,000 to make up the difference.

But its not just the dscount the Times regrets but pubishing the ad in the first place.

The Times also violated its own advertising policy, which bars “attacks of a personal nature,” Clark Hoyt wrote in his column. Hoyt wrote that the ad:

 gave fresh ammunition to a cottage industry that loves to bash The Times as a bastion of the ‘liberal media.’ ”

Oooooo I just love the verbage there.

Hoyt’s column comes 3 business days after the Senate voted 75 to 25 to denounce the ad on Friday.

Even MoveOn.org is feeling regrets as it told its members in a recent e-mail that maybe “the language went too far”, still the group said:

 …make no mistake: this is much bigger than one ad.”

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Filed under: TheRag