The blog for the Nat…

The blog for the National Center for Public Policy Research (run by Dave Ridenour’s wife Amy), has an update on the Staples issue. They’ve been in direct contact with Paul Capelli, a Staples spokesman, trying to get to the heart of the matter. After the press release noting that, given Staples pronouncement on the matter, they no longer believe a boycott is warranted, Amy adds a few notes about the whole incident.

This is my take on what happened here. I suspect Staples originally was too clever by half. It sent emails to lefties that said that its current ad on Sinclair news would end 1/10 — apparently phrased to maximize the likelihood that the lefties would be happy with the email without Staples actually having to do what the leftie wanted.

Probably seemed like good customer relations at the time.

The plan blew up when Media Matters put out a press release declaring victory, and the right started asking questions.

Staples could no longer have it both ways, but it gamely tried to by saying both that it was not political and that it respects its customers’ wishes (hence the news stories Wednesday). Didn’t work.

Now, just to regain the reputation it had as nonpolitical just a few days ago, Staples has had to publicly divorce itself from the lefties it unwittingly married. Meanwhile, Media Matters is exposed for declaring victory without actually (as far as we can tell) having any proof Staples ever did anything it wasn’t planning to do with its ad buys.

That’s my take on it, anyway. Perhaps new information — such as proof from Media Matters that Staples explicitly said it boycotting Sinclair news out of concern that Sinclair news might be excessively partisan — will yet develop.

I’d have to agree that there was something going on with respect to trying to look good to liberals. In none of the National Center’s discussions, nor in any of Staples statements since this started, has the name Owen Davis showed up, even though it was his words that seemed to confirm what Media Matters was saying. He sounded as though Staples was no longer going to by ad time on Sinclair news programs when he said that that portion of the advertising accounted for “a very small part of the overall buy”. And there was this from the same article:

“Staples does not disclose the decision-making or specifics of its media-buying activity,” Davis said. “With that said, Staples did consider among other factors the concerns expressed by our customers” regarding the content on Sinclair news programs, Davis said.

He was talking as though the ad decision had in fact been made, and in part because of customer complaints about Sinclair, but now Staples is backpedalling rather hard. Capelli’s statement to the National Center says that this was just part of a regular plan of marketing.

Capelli, however, told The National Center that Staples stopped advertising on Sinclair news on January 10 because a previously scheduled ad campaign targeted to the Christmas season had ended. A new ad campaign, consisting of a different combination of ad buys, on a “back to work” theme had previously been scheduled to replace the ad campaign utilizing Sinclair news.

The two statements don’t quite agree. I’d be really interested in hearing what Davis says he meant.

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