The New York Times is set to broadcast its first commercial in seven years during today’s Academy Awards, the 30-second ad by Droga5 New York includes audio from news clips talking about the ‘truth’.
The TVC is airing just days after The White House blocked several major news outlets including The The New York Times, CNN, BBC, LA Times, New York Daily News, BuzzFeed, The Hill, and Daily Mail from its daily press briefing without any explanation.
“Nothing like this has ever happened at the White House in our long history of covering multiple administrations of different parties,” Dean Baquet, executive editor of The New York Times, said in a statement. “We strongly protest the exclusion of The New York Times and the other news organisations. Free media access to a transparent government is obviously of crucial national interest.”
Print versions of the campaign will also run on billboards in New York, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., and San Francisco, online and in The Times itself.
“Picking a program that was high-profile and that would get people talking made sense for us,” New York Times senior vp-head of brand David Rubin told CNN. “If one of our objectives was to insert ourselves in the debate that’s going on that, frankly, we’ve been a part of, a high-profile media buy made sense.”
“There’s a national dialogue going on now about facts and truth and how does one know what the truth is,” Rubin said.
“We saw an opportunity to be part of that dialogue. We also found in our research that people don’t always understand what it takes to do quality original reporting, but when they do, when that becomes part of the dialogue — about how one finds the truth and about the role journalists can play, they are more interested in supporting it.”
President Donald Trump tweeted about the ‘failing New York Times’ and the campaign approximately eight minutes after CNN discussed the ad:
For first time the failing @nytimes will take an ad (a bad one) to help save its failing reputation. Try reporting accurately & fairly!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 26, 2017
Twitter response:
Trump takes swipe at the NYT for its Oscars ‘truth’ ad
Baquet went on CNN to discuss the ad:
https://youtu.be/xecZyOhzO8w
