Let’s shoot this horse… Actually this horse died a long time, stop beating it already and make another mistake so we can have something more interesting to complain about. Next ad: “Eugenics, The miracle science”

Wow this is a cop-out

So your admitting you made a mistake solely because you didn’t realize this would cause offense/fear to the Jewish committee?

What happened to Smather’s blatant claim that he was protecting the first amendment by allowing the ad to run?????

Your not going to admit that he was in the wrong with his argument??

“First, we had no formal oversight of the online advertisements…” - You needed oversight to point out the obvious for you?!

“We were not aware of the Holocaust denial advertisement until five full days after it made it onto our website.” - You mean this ad sneaked onto the BH website by itself?

“Secondly, the anti-Semitic comments that made it onto our comment boards did so first because of an unmoderated system…” - Unmoderated? Gosh, some comments condemning the decision of a campus newspaper run by liberals to run the ad were submitted, but were discarded, just like this one probably will be.

“What�s more, however, we even more strongly regret the harm done to the Jewish community as a result of the last month.” - Sounds more like you regret the grilling you got for it.

“In making our original decision to keep the ad, we did not fully recognize the virulence of anti-Semitism still present today…” - TRANSLATION: “We routinely forget to pull our heads out of our asses before punching the clock.”

“We never want another student to feel he or she can�t enroll at this university because they feel it isn�t safe or that they aren�t respected.” - Unless, of course, you are part of a very small demographic that half the world has always hated for no good reason, in which case we’ll make your life a living Hell.

“Second, online advertisements will be subject to approval by the Advertising Director before being posted to our website.” - Excuse me, but isn’t a policy like that already in place at the BH? If not, then welcome to the 18th century!

“Third, our comments will now be subject to a few more limitations…” - For example, any comments that convey an opinion contrary to ours will not make it past the moderator’s desk. And if we’re really pissed off, we’ll notify your Internet service provider and you’ll be in big trouble, mister!

“…the comments on this letter should revolve around those issues only; comments not relevant to this discussion will be removed.” - We can’t take any more heat for the stupid things we’ve done and the lame excuses we’ve given, so please stop picking on us!

While this is a good start I want to see the Herald actually follow through. Additionally, I do not buy your justification for not taking the ad down. Regardless, this is such a disgraceful ordeal for the Herald. Words cannot express the embarrassment you have brought to our university. It remains undeniably disgraceful

Apparently, 317th time’s (more or less) the charm when it comes to writing apologies.

Knowing that in your own words this was, “an affront to history, an insult to this campus� intelligence and a veiled attack on the Jewish students who attend the University of Wisconsin,” let alone from other communities across the country, it is curious to me why the add was accepted in the first place. Not knowing that this is “an affront to history, an insult to this campus� intelligence and a veiled attack on the Jewish students who attend the University of Wisconsin” is equally troubling. You placed your newspaper in a position of gaining the public trust. A simple “we are very sorry,” goes a long way to that end.

This is still a cop out, just remember all of you involved at the Herald, one day some one will google your name for a job interview and see this crap.

“So tell me Smathers, why do you love nazi’s?”

The only group in this I feel bad for is the J-school professors having to know that such a large active group of students has let their teachings go in one ear and out the other.

When I see an ad for a site that is insulting/upsetting to Muslims then I will know that you all have the courage of your convictions.

Maybe if the Jews would riot, burn and murder when offended like this then this kind of thing wouldn’t happen?

PS. Did the BH publish the Muhammed cartoons?

If students are making a college choice based on what some idiots on an online newspaper comment board are saying, I think something may have gone wrong somewhere.

This statement is not believable. What about Smathers previous statements that you knew exactly what was being bought and did so anyway on free speech grounds?

How about he resigns in that case, since he either lied to you or lied to the UW community?

This is certainly a first step in the right direction for the Badger Herald. However, it is still very troubling that they would allow the ad to continue to run. The Badger Herald has allowed Bradley Smith to spread his virus on this campus. Every hour that ad continues to run gives him a bigger platform to express his lies. He is using us! After all he himself said:�I don’t want to spend time with adults anymore. I want to go to students. They are superficial. They are empty vessels to be filled.� -Bradey Smith. The Badger Herald staff could have found this quote and other disturbing information on him if they had done a proper background check on him when the ad first came about.

Jew-hating website will remain… gratuitous personal attacks (on BH) “may be deleted.”

/priorities

If you believe what you say, that “The advertisement … is an affront to history, an insult to this campus� intelligence and a veiled attack on the Jewish students who attend the University of Wisconsin,” then how can you justify leaving the ad up for another five days? To say that the campus community has fought back with the truth is not a sufficient justification for continuing to publicize something that threatens students, in my opinion. If you mean what you say, take the ad down now.

You fought with “the truth”, did you?

Then why did not you print my truthful comments about Elie Weisel and his father, who were offered a choice between waiting for their Soviet liberators or fleeing west with the same Germans who had first tried to flame pit them to death, but then decided they would feed, medicate, and perform foot surgery on Jews who performed no work, per Elie weisel’s book “Night”?

You and the entire student body wouldn’t survive 2 minutes in an open debate about this subject. And that is the reason for the demand that debate be suppressed, at all costs.

It’s your newspaper, do what you want. But the smarminess is a little much.

I’m sorry — “veiled attack”? “Borderline content”?

I can only conclude by this utterly insane description of what’s going on that you have no greater grasp on reality than Bradley Smith and his ilk.

Would you ban the advertisement for a talk by Jimmy Carter, or Walt and Mearsheimer? After all, many in the Jewish community were deeply offended by their criticism of Israel. Is that going to be a criterion for publishing in the BH, that it not be offensive to Jewish community? Do you have the courage of your convictions, that is, will you make that condition explicit? Or will you camouflage it?

The incredible response of the BH to a simple seven word ad shows exactly how true the ad was, there is a taboo against any questioning of the holocaust, to the extend that you have to revamp your policies to make sure that even the taboo is ever mentioned in your paper again. Your response to this ad is a testament to the power of the Jewish community to control the press.

Remarkable. The purpose of a university is supposed to be education and research, not enforcing taboos. And this is a very important taboo, as it is directly linked to criticism of the US support for Israel. You should reconsider this capitulation to the Jewish community.

So does this column contain the truth, or did Smathers’ original defense contain the truth? It certainly can’t be both. As Friedland noted in the forum, these explanations being ad hoc make them basically useless. Here are some flaws:

Flaw One: You keep referring to the UW community being smart enough to reject the ad. I’m sorry, but UW students are not the only people who read this paper. Also, it’s hard to believe the community is strong enough after anti-semitic posts appeared on your very web site literally days before the ad appeared.

Flaw Two: Representatives of your paper (most notably Smathers) have offered contradictory accounts of why the ad is still on your site.

Flaw Three: Even after the leaders of journalism ethics (the panel on which your editor sat) all but denounced your decisions as ridiculous, you still maintain you’re right? I would love to take the Herald course of ethics sometime. It would be filled with examples of what not to do.

In sum, you made a bad choice not to monitor online ads. Then you compounded that poor choice by attempting to defend the ad placement post hoc. Then after everyone with any sensibility and professionalism told you how wrong you were, you maintained your rightness.

A final note- please do not say members of the UW community proved you right. It won’t make us like you more.

Pulling the ad discriminates against Holocaust-skeptic Bradley Smith who is simply presenting another opinion for intelligent truth-seeking students to consider. Free speech is the right to publicize different opinions no matter how unpopular. If Smith pays to continue the ad, it should not be pulled.

Re the comment above: “Pulling the ad discriminates against Holocaust-skeptic Bradley Smith who is simply presenting another opinion for intelligent truth-seeking students to consider.” And the next comment, also referring to “Holocaust skeptics.” Excuse me? Saying that the Holocaust didn’t happen is “another opinion?” That the extremely well-documented facts of the Holocaust are something to be skeptical about? What is wrong with you people? Attitudes like these are precisely the reason you should never have run this ad and should not be continuing to run it!

The ad should not have been published anyway. The author presents lies for which he has no proof. His arguments are well-crafted and sound like they are supported by research. Thousands of Holocaust historians have already successfully refuted his claims. But there are still those who will accept his case as the truth. Also, consider the target audience-college students. Remember back in the 60’s and 70’s, when religious cults could find a mother lode of young, impressionable minds? How gullible are today’s college students? Sure, not many of us would tag along with Hare Kirshnas and shave our heads and burn incense, but how many of us would shave our heads and wear brown shirts and swastikas if some middle-age white supremacist came to campus with a few spit-and-polish neo-Nazis with shiny SS belt buckles and t-shirts for sale? Nothing like a little glitz and glamor to sell a product. It works for our favorite pop stars, maybe it’ll work for them too. And considering the fact that liberals have been total extremists in this town for the longest time, there are probably quite a few people who’d love to see elements of the radical right come to town and stir the pot even more.

There is a war on for your mind, kids. How easily duped are you? The radical left and the radical right bombard us everyday with messages imploring us to take up their cause. What exactly have the Jews on this campus ever done to incite hatred for anyone?

At least two of the comments posted here support Holocaust denial and are therefore anti-Semitic. You at the Badger Herald clearly do not know enough about Holocaust deniers to even recognize the language they use. You are way over your heads and should get some help from experts. I would suggest Dr. Deborah Lipstadt at Emory University.

I think the Badger Herald should just go out of business.

” The Holocaust deniers certainly made their presence obvious on our comment boards, but the student body was ready to combat their message and use the tools Chancellor Biddy Martin and the UW community has armed them with: The truth”.

You are kidding,right! Where is the tie in between ad hominem attacks and the truth.

The best the believers have offered is to say that it happened because they say it did and their teacher told them it did. Settled science, right? Spare me.

Folks, for those who have read ANYTHING on this TOPIC, understand that in the past 20 years, roughly 90% of the gospel of the holocaust, according to the holocaust high priests has been shelved as legend, myth or outright lies.

Yes, it is the revisionists crowd who time and time and time again forced the hand of the promoters and had them discard bogus story after bogus story.

It remains one of the reasons, if not the top reason it is agasint the law to doubt the holoaut in Europe.

The holocaust is a cash cow and it will be protected.

I am an Israelite, so mute the anti semitic recording.

I sent a detailed post criticizing the board’s reaction to a seven word ad. That one was too much for the BH. I’ll summarize, this whole incident will serve as a textbook case for Zionist control of the press.

I have been greatly amused by all this incredible fuss over some three-line paid ad simply pointing to a website calling for “open debate on the holocaust” — if you could all see how funny you look!

Truth can stand on it’s own feet yet you all scramble to protect it! :-)

Finally, an apology. It should not have taken this long, but I feel better about this paper now that I have seen one.

The whole episode demonstrates how the traditional enemies of free speech operate.

And what they fear most - open sebate.

If you were smart enough to know about mass deception, you would not freak out over questions to the Orthodoxy of Holocaustianity.

You should have understood that when people in Europe are sent to jail for doubting the official story and saying so, it means that the Holocaust is not what it is being presented as.

To admit this is to admit that you know nothing about the world and the way it works.

So keep up the rants. After all, victors do write the history to suit their agendas. The holocaust is a distortion of fact to suit the Allied/Jewish agenda and it works well to this very day.

You shame all honest Jews when you restrict free inquiry into the holocaust or any topic!

“The Holocaust deniers certainly made their presence obvious on our comment boards, but the student body was ready to combat their message and use the tools Chancellor Biddy Martin and the UW community has armed them with: The truth.”

What truth are you referring to?

Here is the truth: �The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry� by Arthur R. Butz, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois

Its funny to hear all the bad things that are done ,but has anyone looked into what bradley has said? NO. all the IDIOTS can say is he’s an evil racist hater , instead of using there brains (that they obviosly dont have) to slander a person and there goals of getting the truth out there. How is it hate? did he say he wants to kill all the jews?? no he didnt. he is just trying to get facts out there so people can see the idiocy of the holo-lie movement.

Wow. Free speech really scares the crap outta you people. So some jews get to turn on their boo-hoo machine. Big deal. I’d rather have free speech and some whining jews than no free speech and some whining jews. The only thing you all have to apologise for is caving to jewish interests. If they want a jewish world, get the hell back to Izreal where they belong and stop treading on my freedom. Remember the last people you did that too?

Why not simply demolish Smith and end this nonsense? The name of just one person, with proof, who was gassed by the Nazis anytime during Sept 1939 - May 1945, is all that is required.

It is proper to edit or delete any comment that might insult a person, ( except Bradley Smith,I guess) but the fact remains if a paper only presents one side of an issue, it loses its credibility. Geocentrism is a topic that has opinion on both sides. Should only the voices of the heloecentric believers be heard?

I read all of the posts on these many comment boards and found only one or two that might be deemed somewhat offensive. Of course, nearly every post insulted Bradley Smith so hate appears to be a matter of what side of the fence you are on.

In 1945, Nazi leaders were convicted and executed as war criminals after a trial in which it was deposed, without dissent from defending counsel, that 4,000,000 people were unlawfully killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

By 2010 the official total is down to just over 1,000,000. In recent years a researcher commissioned by a French Jewish charity, Pressac, reduced his best estimate to under half a million. Later, working independently, so did a left-wing German historian, Fritjof Meyer. Neither man faced prosecution in countries where ‘Holocaust denial’ is illegal.

The truth is that exaggerated, ill-documented atrocity stories lacking forensic evidence— which in this case originated with the Soviet army propaganda department— will continue to be scrutinized and usually moderated as reality kicks in. That process will go on whether the cringing apologists of censorship at UW like it or not, and no matter whether or not it suits the self-pitying and moral-blackmailing habits of Israel and her American Amen Chorus.

In 1945, Nazi leaders were convicted and executed as war criminals after a trial in which it was deposed, without dissent from defending counsel, that 4,000,000 people were unlawfully killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

By 2010 the official total is down to just over 1,000,000. In recent years a researcher commissioned by a French Jewish charity, Pressac, reduced his best estimate to under half a million. Later, working independently, so did a left-wing German historian, Fritjof Meyer. Neither man faced prosecution in countries where ‘Holocaust denial’ is illegal.

The truth is that exaggerated, ill-documented atrocity stories lacking forensic evidence— which in this case originated with the Soviet army propaganda department— will continue to be scrutinized and usually moderated as reality kicks in. That process will go on whether the cringing apologists of censorship at UW like it or not, and no matter whether or not it suits the self-pitying and moral-blackmailing habits of Israel and her American Amen Chorus.

The newspaper’s board of director’s reaction is political correctness run amok. The board had a golden opportunity to support freedom of expression, and blew it. The board members should be ashamed of themselves.

The ad made no incitement to anti-Semitism and is not responsible for threatening or hateful anti-Semitic comments that were made in response to the ad.

It is obvious that the biggest purpose of condemning holocaust denial/revisionism as anti-Semitic is to attempt to suppress debate on the subject.

My own view of the holocaust is that whereas there was persecution of Jews and atrocities were committed against Jews, a “systematic” holocaust was impractical because the Nazis had no objective and reliable way(s) of identifying Jews and non-Jews. What is anti-Semitic about that viewpoint?

As usual, the holohoax and/or the Jewish question cannot be discussed in a rational manner. True to form, the jews, obfuscate, delay, change the subject, et al but still no refutation of Smith’s claims!

Why always become red-faced when questions are asked about the “holocaust”? Bradley Smith’s desire to have evidence and not an arbitrary narrative as proof is the only one people with intellect and decency can defend. A question is not a “lie”, or a “vicious lie”, it needs an answer. University students should be intelligent and be capable of understanding that they are being manipulated. Manipulation aims at using someone for an end that is not explicitly approved, and the whole “holocaust” narrative is just that. Manipulation on the grandest scale. Let the narrators of the “holocaust” show proof of their story; let them speak respectfully and calmly; let them finance their own campaign with their own money; let them explain why they have no objection to people being imprisoned for years for finding the whole “holocaust” narrative lacking in factuality, and let them explain why they rather imply that someone has ill intent for asking reasonable questions than answering them. Let them explain.