Editorial: Campaign mailer was out of line

Friday, Sept. 1, 2000 | 9:23 a.m.

Voters obviously should be skeptical of literature they receive from politicians running for office, especially when it's a hit piece against an opponent. A case in point was a recent mailer by state Senate candidate Uri Clinton, who is seeking to unseat Sen. Joe Neal, D-North Las Vegas. Without the Sun's permission, Clinton used copyrighted Sun articles and headlines to condemn Neal's alleged views on nuclear waste. For instance, Clinton used a photo of a recent fiery accident involving a tanker truck with this Aug. 3 Sun headline: "What if this cargo had been nuke waste?"

Even though the Sun stories never mentioned Neal, Clinton juxtaposed the Sun's stories with the accusation that in 1993 Neal had said he's not opposed to nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain, an assertion that Neal denies. The way the Sun's stories were reproduced in the mailer also implied -- wrongly -- that the newspaper had tacitly endorsed Clinton's candidacy. The Sun rarely endorses candidates in primary elections and has not done so in this contest. In response to the mailer, the Sun threatened to sue the Clinton campaign and its manager, Tom Letizia.

An ad in today's Sun on page 5B, which was paid for by the Clinton campaign, apologizes to the Sun and its readers for misappropriating the Sun's copyrighted material. Other candidates running for office should understand that the Sun will not idly stand by when there are abuses of its copyrighted material -- and that we will let our readers know promptly if this were ever to happen again.

There are politicians who inevitably will push the bounds of propriety when trying to win an election. One of the obligations of a newspaper is to clearly point out to the public when a politician makes claims that are misleading or aren't supported by the facts. Readers take seriously what they read in a newspaper, since they expect that the information is objectively examined before it is published. So when a politician reproduces this paper's work as part of an attack on someone, creating the false impression that the Sun is endorsing that attack, the net effect is to undermine the paper's credibility as an objective source of news. The Sun would never give its permission for, nor tolerate under any circumstances, such a use of its work.