Subject: ACTUP Charges WMUR-TV With Censorship
Date: Published: 1/10/92 (38 lines)
Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc.

    Marketing & Media -- Advertising:
    Fake Newscast Ads Proliferate,
    Blurring Even More Lines on TV
    ----
    By Joanne Lipman

[85 lines irrelevant to AIDS removed.  -- sysop]

    Station Pulls AIDS Ad
    The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power is charging a
 Manchester, N. H., network affiliate with censorship over a
 paid public-issue ad that the station refused to air because
 of "sexually explicit visuals."
    The ad shows photographs of homosexual and heterosexual
 couples kissing passionately and ends with ACT UP's slogan
 "Silence=Death."  A voice-over challenges viewers to ask the
 presidential candidates about acquired immune deficiency
 syndrome.  ACT UP spokesman Michael Petrelis said WMUR-TV, the
 ABC-affiliate in Manchester, accepted the ad and sold him
 nine spots in which it would air, but changed its mind days
 later.
    "I think they're afraid of appearing quote unquote
 pro-gay," Mr. Petrelis said.  "It's a silence of our freedom
 of speech, which we were going to pay for."  But WMUR's vice
 president and general manager, Larry Gilpin, said that even
 though the station's programming department had accepted the
 ad, he overruled their decision.  "I decided this portrayal of
 sexuality isn't the appropriate way to communicate the
 problem of AIDS to New Hampshire,' he said, stressing it was
 the visuals, not the copy, that prompted his decision.

[This article is made available here by Dow Jones Co. for the
 personal and non-commercial use of callers to this bbs, in the
 hope that it will be of some help to those who are suffering
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