ABC Board Acts To Censure Hoy Newspaper.

The Board of Directors of the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC), at its just-concluded July 7-10, 2004 meeting, censured Hoy (New York, N.Y.) for circumvention of ABC’s bylaws and rules.

As a result of this censure, the Board imposed the following sanctions upon each of these publications:

They will be required to submit their circulation claims to more frequent audits: for the next two years, their records will be audited every six months, rather than annually.

For the next year, their circulation claims will be excluded from FAS-FAX, ABC’s semi-annual report of “top-line” publisher circulation claims. There will also be a notation in FAS-FAX explaining this exclusion is a result of the “censure.”
They will be required to submit to the ABC Board a plan of action for correcting their practices.

The ABC Board was unanimous in its condemnation of rules circumvention and of deceptive and fraudulent circulation practices. “The relationship between publisher and advertiser is based upon trust,” observes ABC Board Chairman Robert Troutbeck. “Each member of the ABC Board agrees that we, as an industry, do not tolerate rules circumvention, to say nothing of fraud, and will do whatever is necessary to preserve the trust between publishers and advertisers that all sides value so highly.”