Paper Apologizes For Publishing 'Assassinate Obama' Ad

WARREN, Pa. — A northwestern Pennsylvania newspaper is apologizing for running a classified advertisement calling for the assassination of President Barack Obama.

Warren Times Observer Publisher John Elchert says the ad appeared Thursday. It read, "May Obama follow in the steps of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy!" The four presidents were all assassinated.

Elchert tells The Associated Press that the newspaper's advertising staff didn't make the historical connection.

He says the newspaper turned information over to police and that the Secret Service is investigating the person who placed the ad.

A note in Friday's paper says the newspaper "apologizes for the oversight."

Comments

[chibbles]

Didn't make the historical connection. Yeah right. I think they made the connection and just didn't care.

[OswegoKayaker]

This is Warren, PA they are 98% white and voted 52% for John McCain. That newspaper is very proud of being anti-liberal and I am sure they thought the ad was a hoot and they would get away with it. And they will, the person who set the ad will get fired (if anyone does) and the editors will go out for a game of golf and laugh all day about it.

[militarymomforobama]

Maybe they got their "journalism" degrees from one of Sarah's old schools.

What kind of dim wit wouldn't make the connection?

[BannedInBoston]

Somehow it doesn't surprise me that newspaper ad vetters wouldn't catch a historical reference like that.

[jadedat51]

Maybe my 10-year-old son can get a summer job at the Warren Times Observer, as part of the advertising staff. He would have made the connection.

[hapiday]

It's nearly impossible for anyone who can read to not critique any written print with this president's name in it. These people work for the newspaper. It is their responsible to be more critical of content and context of any publication even if it's an advertisement. Especially, if it contains the president's name. This was not a mistake.

[Nomccain]

Sorry Hell, they should be arrested as terrorists! Why is it considered terrorism for a person to make verbal threats against the President while a newspaper is allowed to get off with an apology which is probably not even sincere. This is outrageous and shows the huge cracks in our criminal justice system.

[intarz]

I was shown a copy of the actual newpaper with the ad and asked for my reaction:

1) It was placed in the "Personal Ad" section where people usually put congradulatory messages. My first reaction was that someone was hoping that Obama would be successful and follow in the footsteps of the two great presidents I quickly noticed in the ad: Lincoln and Kennedy. Hey context means a lot.
2) My first questioning of the ad was when I saw Garfield included in the President's list as is not considered a great president.
3) It was not until the third thought that I connected the common theme between the parties listed.

I have seen a lot worse threats or hopes of harm against the President and others made in print on message boards on the Internet. Are these people followed up upon? I don't know. I have to say that after it was viewed as a threat and reported everywhere as such then it is a lot easier to come to a conclusion. Personally if I had read the original comment and not have been asked my reaction I would have thought #1 and moved on. Then again I have to admit if I read Personal Ads, which I don't, I would not be reading them with thoughts of threats against the President in mind.

[qdog112]

"I have seen a lot worse threats or hopes of harm against the President and others made in print on message boards on the Internet."

Apples and oranges - any organization responsible for what "they" publish as an organization, should be held accountable for solicitation of threats.

PERIOD!

[AKaurora]

I agree and understand. The older one is, the more likely one would eventually make the connection. It's doubtful a non-history major would even begin to understand. I doubt the staff who takes classified ads generally have more than a H.S. diploma and wouldn't even recognize Garfield as more than a cartoon cat's name. I think the Secret Service should check out the person who placed the ad; however, the apology suffices for me as to the newspaper's culpability.

[heartsick]

Does not work for me!

[BeasleysMom]

I used to be a pretty passive person, but I have become so si ck of the citizens who constantly spew h ate and wish vi ole nce on the President and anything Democratic, that I hope the purchaser of the ad, along with the newspaper, are held criminally responsible for printing this ad.

Decent, civilized people must start demanding that this stuff stops and letting the extreme right know that it will not be tolerated any longer. These people are trying to des troy our country and the principles on which it was founded.

[Rubyslippers]

Amen. I'm surprised that this has been allowed to go on as it has.
I was on politico this am (the burger story?) and noticed they published someone's wish for a Dallas type scenario underneath someone else's racial epithet regarding POTUS (n-word). For real. Pinch me. Is this America? What era are we living in? There's a difference between freedom of speech and death threats the last time I checked. The FCC/secret service/FBI/whoever should be on each and every one of these people's tails. This is not the America I grew up in. It's simply not acceptable.
How about some healthy public condemnation for this kind of behavior along with a side of secret service visit surprise and a nice helping of criminal prosecution? Death threats are no joke and shouldn't be business as usual or treated as such. The right wing has officially lost its mind and doesn't seem to care.

[neocon666]

That ad is typical of what the conservatives want anyway. Just listen to reicht wing blowhards -they know they can't come out and say it, but they're clearly are trying to create an atmosphere of urgency and fear. Michael Savage constantly calls president Obama a communist and says "we're all going to die if Obama isn't stopped". The other day, he quoted PRAVDA of all sources in an attempt to prove it.

They still can't wrap their minds around the fact that Barack Obama is president and will be president at least until 2012 if their lucky. The conservatives are just hoping that their words will touch someone fanatical enough to grant them their wish.

[plaidsportcoat]

Oversight is not the word. Ignorance, stupidity of the average american is the sad fact. Doomed to repeat everything including slavery?

[postman66]

Remember the Maine store and their Obama Dead Pool.

And in a Maine convenience store, an Associated Press reporter saw a sign inviting customers to join a betting pool on when Obama might fall victim to an assassin. The sign solicited $1 entries into “The Osama Obama Shotgun Pool,” saying the money would go to the person picking the date closest to when Obama was attacked. “Let’s hope we have a winner,” said the sign, since taken down…

[Peaceisnecessary]

Is the advertising staff run by a bunch of morons. They did not make the connection. I don't believe it.

[Vegan Valorie]

While in very bad taste, it's not a threat, nor is it illegal.

Now had the wording been changed slightly to replace "May" with "I will make sure" then we are talking a threat.

To be convicted though, there would have to be more than just words. It's a very popular misconception that if you say the words "Dead" and "President" in the same sentence you go to jail.

[HyperInfluential]

It's true there are many urban legends around this, but no, this particular sentence in the ad is clearly a death threat. The person is expressing their desire that this crime take place, and they used code to evade detection to disseminate that message to the populace, thus showing a premeditated determination to incite people to commit violence.

That's a pretty serious crime, which is why I insist on evidence before believing sales associates at the ad desk deliberately let the message through because they too wish to abet the crime of inciting violence against our President. Why don't you guys wait for the authorities in the Secret Service to weigh in before you condemn these people as domestic terrorists.

[Vegan Valorie]

Still, simply having a desire for a president to be assassinated is not the same as planning to, or saying you will carry out the attack. The planning or threatinging is the crime part, not simply wishing the president ill fate.

Think back to protests of Bush, where dolls that look liked Bush were hanged by the neck, or burned in effigy. That is certainly not a threat to the president, and is very similar to this.

I once saw a picture on the Internet, you know the type, one of those pie charts meant to be humorous. It was titled Obama's Inauguration Speech. And had two pieces of the pie. One that had about 5% filled in that said "Time I spent listening to the words" The other part with 95% filled in was "Time I spent thinking I was about to witness a headshot live on TV" -- Also in bad taste, but still not a threat.

I have seen a few "Biden 09" bumper stickers around town, and do not consider that a threat. I don't consider it much other than simply begging for your car to be vandalized.

[SoccerNana]

This reeks of an "inside" job. Some one or some people who work in that section of this so called newspaper are a part of this. Why would you place an ad that reads like a "signal" in the classified section of the newspaper. That is a signal to carry out are start the plan of action.

For this Country's sake, Secret Service had better keep President Barrack Hussein Obama and his family safe.

[HyperInfluential]

http://www.timesobserver.com/page/category.detail/nav/5070/Employee-Directory.html

Here is the staff directory for the Warren Times Observer. Which of these 30 people do you think is the criminal mastermind? Which one of the half a dozen sales associates do you think deliberately committed this crime? Which of them should lose their livelihood and be exposed to national shame forever? Here they are, laid bare for your inspection. Which ones were in on it, eh? Martha? Kelli? Cathi? They sound like real radicals to me.

For shame, people. This was obviously a mistake. That is why the article about the incident had to include the sentence "The four presidents were all assassinat­ed." Obviously, the editors and reporters at THIS VERY NEWSPAPER made the editorial call that most people would not have instantly grasped the connection between the four men, so an explanatory note was appropriate.

You all act like you remember everything from sixth grade as though it were yesterday, and this would have leaped out at you, so obviously the 30-person staff of this local paper conspired together to commit the crime of threatening the president, and are only making up this tale of not reading every single classified ad with an eye to coded messages as a clever ruse to get out of jail.

Come on. That doesn't make logical sense.

[OswegoKayaker]

A newspaper takes money for an ad that obviously is talking about killing a president --no one could misconstrue its intent. It doesn't take a history major to understand this. Newspapers are in the history business -- they are also in the news business. They have to be aware of all the assassination attempts against him -- like the Aryan Nation attempt on the anniversary of MLK's "I have a dream" speech -- or the hundreds like this. So to be coy and pretend that the newspaper didn't understand something so glaring is ridiculous. When the right wing nuts and the GOP are saturating the airwaves with Obama hatred and Fox News sponsoring Tea Bagging rallies which are right on the edge of treason, you would know we live in a country that is filled with whites who are really unhappy with a black president. So you would think every newspaper would be hyper vigilant.

[OswegoKayaker]

Have you read the paper? They are right wing. All you have to do is read the Our Opinion page to see where they fall. They are against liberals and call them dogmatic. They are hawks.

People might not know about Garfield and McKinley but EVERYONE knows who Kennedy & Lincoln were and knows they were murdered so it wouldn't take a genius to know what the ad was about. I worked for a paper and the sales people were not all that sharp but the typesetters and graphics people were almost all really smart people often journalism majors. I ran the graphics department and believe me we checked out every ad that ran big, small -- every one. There were going to be no lawsuits for stupid tricks. Newspapers have agendas -- they are right or left or whatever, but they definitely are owned by people who let you know which way things should slide. The "Liberal Media" is mostly a myth -- we saw Bush get away with all kinds of things and the media just couldn't stop waving the flag around him and never running negative stories about him.

[Stan-Musical]

Probably the people working with the ads aren't journalists, and they don't know their history. It's a sad commentary on many levels, especially that certain details of history aren't taught in the schools, and they are probably young people who never learned who these presidents are. And if they aren't history buffs themselves, who would want to study history on their own, they would have no clue who President Garfield or McKinley were.

[iyamchazz]

Pity they can't un-ring that bell.