A Tennessee newspaper has caused a stir for refusing to run an advertisement placed by a Christian store.
FoxNews.com reports that Lois McGinnis and her family own Cedar Springs Christian Store in Knoxville. The McGinnis family owns two store locations, but recently decided to close the second location.
McGinnis called the local newspaper, the News Sentinel, to place a going-out-of-business ad. McGinnis wanted the ad to say: “Store closing sale – Cedar Springs Christian Store – Clinton Highway location – All merchandise, fixtures, slat walls must go. Sale through August 13, phone 865.947.XXX.”
But when McGinnis opened the newspaper the day the ad was scheduled to run, it wasn’t there, so she called the newspaper office.
The employee whom she spoke with explained to her why the paper hadn’t run her ad:
“She said our ad did not run because it contained an offensive word,” McGinnis told Fox News’s Todd Starnes. “I asked what that offensive word was and she said the offensive word was ‘Christian.’”
McGinnis received no notification from the newspaper that the word “Christian” would be considered offensive. The newspaper also did not say they would refund her money for not running the ad.
Cedar Springs Christian Store decided to tell their Facebook followers about the experience with the News Sentinel.
It did not take long for residents of the Knoxville area to call out the News Sentinel for its bias.
Because of the outcry, the newspaper eventually backpedaled and stated, “We had a system failure, which resulted in a classified ad for Cedar Springs getting hung up in our front end system.”
The newspaper also said they would now run the ad for an extended period of time without extra charge.
Photo courtesy: Thinkstockphotos.com
Publication date: August 2, 2016
