The State Department is investigating to see whether The New York Times violated American sanctions against Sudan by publishing an advertising supplement touting investment in the country. America has maintained a complex set of sanctions against the North African nation since 1997. The sanctions initially were aimed at punishing Sudan's support for international terrorism, efforts to destabilize neighboring governments and violations of human rights. In recent years, the government in Khartoum has come under intense criticism from Western nations and human rights groups for allegedly encouraging genocide in the Sudanese region of Darfur.The same day that the eight-page supplement was published, the Times ran an editorial decrying the spread of genocide from the Darfur region of Sudan into neighboring Chad, the latest in a series of efforts by the newspaper to shine a spotlight on the mass killings in Darfur and to encourage major international pressure on Khartoum. The Times has caught the attention of the State Department, but not in the way that the newspaper had hoped. "We are currently examining the advertising supplement," Erin Tariot, a spokeswoman for the State Department, told the Forward. "We are looking into it in regards to our own policies with respect to the U.S. sanctions regime against Sudan."
The issue was not the ad's content, but the financial transaction. In addition to drawing scrutiny from the State Department, the Times is being criticized by some activists involved in the campaign to stop the violence in the Darfur. Aside from the question of whether any laws were violated, either by the Times or by the company that placed the supplement, the decision to publish the added feature is highlighting the issue of how closely a newspaper's advertising content should reflect its editorial position. The Times has denounced the Sudanese government as genocidal, and Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has made Darfur one of his signature issues. Martin Raffel, associate executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, accused the Times of violating its own advertising standards in accepting the advertisement. Citing the Times's published standards for "decency and dignity," he told the Forward, "I question whether the systematic rape and destruction of villages is decent and dignified."