Three weeks ago, The Arab American News published a story written by The Associated Press about the CIA and the NYPD cooperating in a massive spying operation on the entire Muslim community in the New York/New Jersey area. 

The following week, we published an article detailing the CIA’s denial of that activity.

A screen shot of The Arab American News website before the CIA abruptly ordered their ads to be pulled.

As we went to press last week, Thursday, September 8, 2011, we received an email from the advertising agency which handles the CIA’s account. “The government agency for the CIA has just contacted us and wants us to remove the banners from your website for undisclosed reasons,” the agency said in its email. A representative from the advertising agency haunted our advertising director all afternoon, repeatedly asking to immediately remove the four ads that the agency just orderedeight days ago. Another email three hours later from the same agency: “Sorry to keep bothering you but the client is giving me a headache.” The CIA has canceled all advertising in The Arab American News.

This is not the first time that a goverment agency has canceled advertising with our paper because of our editorial position. A few years ago, after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Titan Corporation placed recruitment ads for bilingual translators to assist government agencies working in Iraq, including the U.S. armed forces. The ads ran in this paper on a weekly basis in both the  Arabic and English sections. Later Titan’s officials called us and, citing our editorial position on opposing the war in Iraq, canceled all ads and told us that their company would not place any future ads in this paper. (The Arab American News took a very strong and vocal position opposing the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.)

This newspaper was instrumental in inviting the CIA into the community, introducing its employees to community leaders and helping to forge good relations between the force and local organizations. The CIA has sponsored many events in the community and generally been welcomed with open arms.

But the evidence shows that perhaps that was a mistake. We treated the CIA like an American institution that believes in American values, like freedom of speech, freedom of worship and the freedom to peaceably assemble. At least in America.

However, if displeasure with one story the newspaper publishes causes a government agency to pull all its ads in retribution, then we assume everyone should be afraid of the CIA — and maybe the whole government — because it’s obviously “my way or the highway” with them. For us they can pull advertising and satisfy their thirst for revenge.

But what might they do to organizations where such a simple step isn’t readily available?

We don’t care about the money. God knows we don’t publish this newspaper to get rich. We care about the principle. 

Do we have free speech here or not?

For anyone who ever doubted that special interests control the media, there could be no better proof.