In other instances, station executives rejected advertisements on the grounds that they were too visually provocative for young viewers or left the impression that abortions routinely involved healthy late-term fetuses.

The court said the authority had engaged in "viewpoint discrimination" by rejecting three advertisements from the group, Change the Climate, as the agency did not have the right to reject advertisements because it disagreed with their content.

A cable company in San Diego said it did not want to broadcast the commercial but said regulations kept it from rejecting or censoring advertisements by candidates for Federal office.

Under current guidelines, the M.T.A. already has power to reject obscene or false advertisements.

The agency, the regulation states, could also reject advertisements that are "directly adverse to the commercial or administrative interests of the M.T.A. or harmful to the morale of M.T.A. employees."

Distributors boycotted it, newspapers and radio stations rejected advertisements for it, and the projectionists' union refused to run it.

We may reject advertisements on grounds of taste, and we are always willing to consider for publication letters critical of advertising.

There is no need to fear extremists such as Scientologists under the new directive: it will still be possible to reject advertisements or refuse to book assembly rooms.

He added that on several occasions major newspapers rejected advertisements for his company's books - because the titles used the prohibited term, burakumin.