Ad shows up with an ironic twist in a Coronavirus article >> somebody screenshots and posts to reddit >> instant front page >> even more free advertising but somebody calls the CEO who tells his subordinates to find somebody to yell at

So the more likely reason is just uncertain and unpredictable return on ad spend, but that kinda rolls up into it.

For regular run of site ad buys, you're right. And a lot of CMS and ad systems come with a way to flag content as sensitive. For a small ad buy, nobody cares that much.

For big campaigns - bread and butter for print and web - different story. These are carefully designed in-your-face takeover ads and the brands care much more how they're presented.

The bigger problem is ad sales for newspapers is usually just AdSense backfill or national sales from the parent company. The former is just beer money unless your publication is NYT size, the latter is drying up because there's nobody to sell to!

Weren't there Pepsi or Pizza Hut ads being aired for alt-right stuff just a few years ago? I remember much discussion about that.

I don't think we fixed the programmatic part until very recently, if at all.