Consequences Of SEPTA's New Ad Policy
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- A lawsuit that forced SEPTA to allow anti-Muslim ads on its vehicles, two years ago, has had a lasting impact on the system, and on riders who might have benefited from helpful messages placed by the city.
SEPTA's lawyer Gino Benedetti remembers the turmoil caused by those ads, comparing Muslims to Hitler.
"It was difficult for our operators to operate the buses they were on," said Benedetti.
SEPTA had tried to reject them but a judge ruled that, because the agency accepted other "public issue" ads, it had to accept those.
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The ads ran, but SEPTA changed its policy and banned any ad that expressed an opinion.
Benedetti has deemed that to include scientifically backed cautions like: Smoking is bad for your health, and Zika is a harmful disease borne by mosquitoes.
Those are two ad campaigns SEPTA has turned down recently.
"It would be great to be able to run these ads, but then we run the risk that we will also have to run ads that are biased or prejudiced or have hateful messages that we don't want on our vehicles. If we say yes to one we have to say yes to all. So that's the quandary that we're in," Benedetti explained.
Benedetti says the benefits of benign ads are outweighed by the harm that would be caused by another hate campaign. But health department staff regret that they've lost an important way to reach people.
