The New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority refused advertising from The News Guild of New York, which represents U.S.-based journalists and other employees at Thomson Reuters.
The Guild, which has been bargaining with Reuters since July 2014 for a new contract on behalf of nearly 400 employees nationwide, had inquired about placing ads on four large video screens in the MTA’s Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan, as well as on Metro-North trains running to Westchester County and Connecticut.
But the advertising agency the Guild contacted, after initially quoting a price for the ads, told the Guild on Wednesday that the taxpayer-supported MTA would not accept them.
An account executive for the agency, Inspiria Media, noted in a voicemail and email that Reuters is a large client of the MTA’s, having bought virtually all advertising space in Grand Central for the month of September. The account executive also said the MTA considered the Guild ads “political” in nature.
“We are shocked and outraged that a public agency would reject our ads, which are entirely within the realm of free speech and other First Amendment rights,” said Dan Grebler, the Guild’s unit chair at Reuters. “An agency that is supported by taxpayers and supplements its budget with advertising shouldn’t be turning down legitimate business.”
The Guild’s ads would have rotated over a two-minute cycle on video screens that currently feature Thomson Reuters and two other advertisers. The Reuters ads play on the theme of it being “The Answer Company (TM).” The union’s ads would have asserted that without the work of Guild-represented journalists, the company wouldn’t have answers for its clients.
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