The United Methodist Church says its advertising has been banned from one of the most prominent sites on the planet: the 28-floor, 7,000-square-foot electronic billboard on the side of the Reuters building in New York's Times Square, crossed by an estimated 1.5 million people a day.
The church, which is in the midst of a four-year, $21 million advertising campaign, had contracted to run a 30-second television ad on the billboard 10 times daily from Nov. 17 to Nov. 30.
But two weeks after the $30,000 contract was signed, a church spokesman said, the money was returned with the explanation that the news agency does not accept religious advertising on its building.
Samantha Topping, Reuters's director of media relations, said that because Reuters wants to preserve its reputation as an unbiased source of information, the giant billboard does not carry advertisements that are "pornographic, political, religious, libelous, misleading or deceptive."
The Methodist ad was accepted initially, she said, only because of an error by the advertising firm that is responsible for leasing the billboard. "They're aware of our policies. They shouldn't have sold the ad," she said.
Larry Hollon, general secretary of the United Methodist Church's communications department, said Reuters's decision "raises troubling questions" about discrimination against religious groups in commercial speech. "It is utterly amazing and sad. Reuters sells advertising space to beer companies, yet refuses to allow the public to see messages that affect lives in wholesome, positive ways," he said.
But experts disagreed on whether the rejection of the Methodist ad is part of a broader trend in which religion is being pushed out of the public square or, on the contrary, that the ad campaign reflects a growing assertiveness by religious groups in spreading their messages.
"The days of the soapbox are long gone," said Kevin J. "Seamus" Hasson, president of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a public interest law firm in Washington. "The way people communicate now is not by standing on a box and shouting in a park, but by buying access to commercial media, and to deny [religious groups] the opportunity to use those methods is really to crimp the conversation."
Yet, Hasson maintained, that is exactly what is happening.
"There's a mindless consensus out there that religious expression is somehow offensive and therefore it should be treated like cigarette smoke," he said. "And it's not just Times Square. It's the Metro in Washington; it's access to billboards on Staten Island."
On the other side of the debate, Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-founder of the Freedom from Religion Foundation in Madison, Wis., said the fact that a mainline Protestant denomination is spending $21 million on advertising is telling.
"The media unquestionably is more and more a vehicle for orthodoxy of whatever flavor," she said. "We are seeing the airwaves being bought up at an unprecedented rate by religious broadcasters. Mainline churches are losing ground and struggling to compete."
Gaylor added that advertisements for her foundation, which claims a membership of 5,000 freethinkers, atheists and agnostics, have been rejected by dozens of TV stations across the country.
"Maybe it's time for religious denominations to be held to the same standards we are. They have gotten free public service announcements for years," she said. "When you look at the favoritism and free handouts that organized religion is given by the media, they have nothing to complain about."
The Methodist Church's 30-second TV spot shows a woman delivering brightly wrapped packages to various locations in a city, then returning home to find a similar gift on her doorstep. A voice-over says: "If you're searching for ways to share your gifts with others, and possibly even receive something in return, our hearts, our minds and our doors are always open. The people of the United Methodist Church."
The ad, which contains no references to God or Jesus, is a "very soft approach" that has been shown on 17 national cable and broadcast networks, including NBC, MSNBC, CNN, Fox News Channel and ABC Family Channel, Hollon said. He said many media outlets carefully review the content of religious advertisements, and "that's okay with us." When Reuters returned the church's payment, Hollon said, "their intermediary told us they weren't even going to review the ad because it was out of the question."
Chris J. Ahearn, president of Reuters Media, said the policy derives from the founding principles of the British trust that set up the company. "We don't take sides on issues," he said, adding that religion has "historically fallen into the same broad camp" as politics and sex. "All of those can be particularly emotional issues for people," he said.