[if you went to www.seattletimes.com and complained to individuals it might be useful - Will] ----- forwarded message ------ Subject: The Seattle Times refused to run treehugger's ad Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2001 23:44:17 -0700 From: "Richard McManus" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Dick McManus" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> NEWS AND VIEWS YOU DON'T HAVE TO LOSE: Campaigns run by coalitions that include Forest Ethics, Rainforest Action Network American Lands Alliance, Forest Action Network, Student Environmental Action Coalition, Earth First!, Greenpeace, Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council and many others have pressured Home Depot and other major wood sellers to stop selling wood products from old-growth forests. As a result, the recalcitrant members of the American Forest & Paper Association have responded to forest activists' successful campaigns and the shifting market for wood by creating their own certification system, the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI). Forest campaigners say SFI is a sham, and are urging wood buyers to give preference to wood certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, an independent organization. To highlight its concerns with the SFI, Forest Ethics decided to place an advertisement in the Seattle Times during the Green Building Conference, a recent meeting held in Seattle that attracted major U.S. homebuilders. Forest Ethics is a Berkeley, California-based advocacy group that works to protect the ancient rainforests of British Columbia and endangered forests of North America by redirecting U.S. markets toward ecologically sound alternatives. The group's proposed ad mocked the SFI's claim to represent a "bold approach to sustainable forest management" with a picture of an ancient temperate rainforest clearcut in British Columbia by the Interfor company, which SFI recently certified as "sustainable." Asking whether SFI was promoting green wood or a greenwash, the Forest Ethics ad also criticized the SFI certification of Boise Cascade. "SFI's endorsement of Boise Cascade, the largest logger of old growth in the U.S., is further evidence of SFI's toothless standards," the ad's text read. The Seattle Times refused to run the ad. The sticking point, according to Todd Paglia, Forest Ethics campaigns director, was the mention of Interfor and Boise Cascade. Paglia says the Seattle Times offered that the group could run the ad so long as corporations were not mentioned by name. But "at that point, the ad is worthless," Paglia says. And so the ad didn't run. The Seattle Times disputes Paglia's version of events. Lloyd Stull, national sales manager for the paper, says the Seattle Times only requested documentation to support Forest Ethics' assertions. Paglia insists that the paper was uninterested in either documentation for its claims that the companies' are clearcutting or in suggesting word changes to avert libel concerns. In any case, we checked on the claims directly. Spokespersons for Interfor and Boise Cascade readily acknowledge the companies are clearcutting. We were not able on short notice to definitively determine whether Boise Cascade is the number one old-growth logger in the United States. Meanwhile, Forest Ethics directed its attention to the East Coast, and sought to place an ad in the Boston Globe targeting Staples, the office supply company. "The ugly truth is that thousands of acres of forest are needlessly destroyed every year to supply Staples with cheap, disposable paper products," the proposed ad said. It urged readers to "call Tom Stemberg [Staples' CEO] at 508-253-7143 and ask him to stop destroying our forests, or send him a fax at www.StopStaples.com. And when Staples tells you they sell hundreds of recycled products, know that in truth 97 percent of their copy paper comes from clearcut forests." To Paglia's surprise, the Boston Globe refused to run the ad. Taking out the phone information was not enough to satisfy the paper -- the Globe refused to run an ad that mentioned Staples by name. Dennis Lloyd, an advertisement manager at the paper, says only that the paper was not comfortable with the way Forest Ethics "expressed" its views in the ad. The New York Times, by contrast, says that it will run opinion ads so long as they do not constitute libel. A Times representative says the paper would have no problem with the substance of the Staples ad and the mention of the company's name.
