The story begins in April, when the left-liberal media-watch organization Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) started circulating the news that the Boston Globe had rejected an ad criticizing Staples, the giant office-supply chain, for its recycling program or lack thereof.

I called Globe spokesman Rick Gulla, who told me — correctly, in my view — that the ad, submitted by the environmental group Forest Ethics, contained broad, unsubstantiated charges that made it unsuitable for publication. (Examples: “thousands of acres of forest are needlessly destroyed every year to supply Staples with cheap, disposable paper products” and “Staples says that doing the right thing for the environment costs too much.”)

Forest Ethics and FAIR urged their sympathizers to complain to Globe ombudsman Jack Thomas and editor Matt Storin. That, in turn, led to a column by Thomas on June 11 that consisted mainly of a condescending lecture about the difference between the news, op-ed, and advertising departments. “I don’t know how much they drain from the environmental movement in salaries,” Thomas sneered, “but if they’re advising their flock to write to the editor about advertising and if they don’t know enough about newspapers to distinguish among editorial policy, op-ed columns, and advertising standards, they know as much about newspapers and public relations as Bill Clinton knows about marital fidelity.”

In the interest of trying to cut through the rhetorical clutter that now surrounds this issue — and to make up for not writing about this a month and a half ago, when I first learned of it — let me offer a few points of clarification.

• Forest Ethics and FAIR are off-base in thinking that the Globe should have run the ad, which contains several factual statements that may or may not be true. Even if the Globe had given Forest Ethics an opportunity to substantiate those statements, the paper would then need independent verification and a response from Staples. That’s not advertising; that’s journalism.

• The Globe, nevertheless, does not have clean hands when it comes to dealing with such issue-based ads. For instance, last year the Globe rejected an ad from the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America that criticized FleetBank for its “outrageous fees” (see “Adbusters,” This Just In, April 21, 2000). Gulla at the time cited concerns about the accuracy of the fee structure cited in the ad — yet it turned out that the information had been drawn from literature sent out by BankBoston, which was merging with Fleet.

• Flawed though the Forest Ethics ad may be, it levels some serious accusations against Staples, a Framingham-based behemoth with more than 1300 retail stores worldwide and annual sales of $10.8 billion. Just because the ad isn’t going to run is no reason to dismiss those accusations out of hand.

In fact, Staples’s commitment to the environment has been the subject of protests across the country. Forest Ethics and other environmental groups have demanded that Staples stop selling paper made with 100 percent virgin-wood fiber, and to increase substantially its commitment to selling recycled-paper products. Staples has stuck to more modest recycling goals, citing cost and consumer preference.

Last December, the Globe ran a fairly thorough 1200-word account of the issue in its Globe West supplement, which is circulated only in the western suburbs. The Globe can do better than that. If nothing else, some in-depth reporting in the main body of the paper would be a far better answer to the paper’s critics than Jack Thomas’s offhand dismissal.

Issue Date: June 21 - 28, 2001