Petulant FT Refuses to Run Dow Jones-News Corp Ad

The folks at the Financial Times aren't nervous about the new Dow Jones or anything.  From the WSJ:

News Corp.’s $5.6 billion purchase of Dow Jones & Co. won shareholder approval today and the company has prepared a full-page ad heralding the deal that is slated to appear Friday in major newspapers around the world, including News Corp.’s new property, The Wall Street Journal.

But advertising executives at the Financial Times decided not to publish the ad because it makes assertions not “substantiated or attributed to a source,” an FT spokesman said. The spokesman said the paper objected to the sentence: “Today the greatest brand in financial journalism joins up with the world’s most restless global media company.”

“We regret we are unable to run the ad,” the FT spokesman said. “We would have been prepared to reconsider the decision if the ad could be amended.”

It's a good thing no one else ever makes claims in ads that can't be "substantiated or attributed to a source." The FT would be out of business tomorrow.