Recently, Trial magazine began rejecting ads contending that certain services can fatten verdicts and settlements.

The agency's current guidelines, drawn in 1994, allow it to reject only ads that are obscene or false, or that promote illegal products.

It wasn't exactly a radical approach - and those Scholastic magazines that accept advertising would have rejected ads for condoms, according to Richard Robinson, the company's president and chief executive officer.

He said the station had no written policy for rejecting ads and that in its decision regarding "Vox," the management was trying to be sensitive to audience taste.

Until the last few months, Yahoo rejected such ads for fear of offending users.

The new rules let the agency reject ads that are disturbingly violent, demean racial or religious groups, or show people who appear to be minors in sexually suggestive poses.

(The magazine's storied history includes rejecting ads for cigarettes in 1952, a full dozen years before the Surgeon General's landmark report on the dangers of smoking.)

But he added, "Our lifeblood is revenue, and we don't reject ads lightly."

And the company has recently reached out to privacy groups for advice and made it easier for Web surfers to reject ads.

But he said he did not think voters reject ads that compare candidates' records.