Disney Ends Ban on Los Angeles Times Amid Fierce Backlash
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2017/11/06/w...
Also for the curious this was the piece that got LA Times blacklisted: http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-disney-anaheim-deals/
From that article: Even if the parking garage fills just half its spaces, it would still generate more than $35 million in annual revenue and easily hundreds of millions of dollars over the life of the structure.
That money all goes to Walt Disney Co. The city of Anaheim, which owns the garage and spent $108.2 million to build it, charges the company just $1 a year for the lease.
That's a pretty sad testimony to what the web has become, a race to be the first with 'original' content (never mind that 30 other outlets will have the same content within a 24 hour period) in order to sustain a very important plank in the fabric of society: the free press.
Every major publication tries to get some rank for their 50 word post about how "Jimmy killed it last night" and then puts the YouTube embed on their page.
If they do it right, it's a couple million additional visitors that day/week to their site.
(a) apologizes
(b) publicly fires everyone who supported that decision nothing is going to change.
Of course nothing is going to change because the population wants to see the next Star Wars.
Executive producers are often hoping to win awards as well as make money; they'll be leery of the situation too.
Always look for the bottom line. The boost to Disney from winning any given award is minuscule, but the extra cost of talent can be significant.
I feel like everyone framing this as "We won't pre-review movies until you lift the block" gave them too easy of an out.
The media has always been one of the best natural counter-balances in capitalism and democracy to poorly thought out power plays by insecure executives, without requiring direct intervention or oversight by a third party.
Hopefully this isn't shielded in the media as generically the fault of 'Disney', which is a large organization staffed by varied people, but the particular people behind this move. Because lets be honest, this will hardly hurt Disneys bottom line. No one is going to not see their big movies, considering the brands they own and their overall reach. But hopefully it filters back to whichever executive had a power trip over this.
Few power-players have survived attacking the media, unless the media was widely perceived to be wrong about something, which is not the case here.
It’s the most underhand was to be the bigger person.
>Disney has a history of taking punitive action against news organizations and analysts when they publish articles or analysis that it deems unfair.
This kind of behavior can only be afforded by companies with extremely tight control over their media distribution vertical.
Government policy created this monster.
"Every time" is a kind of odd way to describe something that has only happened once definitely, and possibly one other time.
The copyright on Mickey Mouse has been extended twice. The first was the Copyright Act of 1976, which changed copyright terms to match those of most of the rest of the world. Works that were still under copyright at the time were retroactively given the term they would have had in the rest of the world (life + 50 for works of individual authors, publication + 75 for works for hire).
I've not found anything on whether or not Disney lobbied for the 1976 Act. They undoubtedly were in favor of it, but there probably was little need to actually lobby for it. It's main purpose was to bring US law more in line with the rest of the world, paving the way for the US to eventually join the Berne Convention. It also codified fair use and the first sale doctrine, and legalized library photocopying, relaxed notification and registration requirements. There was widespread enough support for all of these that lobbying would not be needed.
The second was the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, which Disney definitely lobbied for.
A non-psychopath PR answer to embarrassing investigative journalism should involve creative attempts to minimize the gravity of the problem, to look good and to confuse the issue: Disney PR managers appear to have learned how to do their job from gangster movies instead.
This is no small feat and imho it's a far more sinister and evil thing to do than straight up murdering some people. They've been one of the main driving forces for the commercialized monopolization of information and ideas, for the worse and most likely for whole generations to come.
There's also something quite macabre about such company focusing so heavily on children and constantly prioritizing their "friendly and nice" appearance: Get them when they are young and they will be loyal their whole life, get them while you are smiling and they won't expect you coming at them.
What I'm trying to suggest here is that there is a parallel between the (Hollywood-based) Disney machine that has employed, enriched, and frustrated storytellers over the years, and the (Silicon Valley-based) machines that are now employing software pros.
Imho it's all part of the same trend where "intangible goods" have become more valuable than actual tangible resources, which seems how we spend our way out of the 2008 recession.
At this point it's pretty much impossible to be a fan of something "pop culture" and not having to pay the IP tax to Disney, or some other massive corporation, for owning that IP.
On one hand, generating money out of writing code or painting a character sure is a good option to have, creative arts need to be properly compensated. But with how copyright law has changed over these past decades this can sometimes have really bad outcomes and as time progresses it feels like more and more of these "intangible goods" are being monopolized.
Happy birthday songs and Christmas songs being "copyrighted", sending out cease-and-desist orders to people singing them, sounds like a bad joke of a dystopian future, but that's where we already have been for quite a while now and it's only getting worse.
And it's not like we'd have to convince just one government to reform copyright, at this point we would rather have to convince mega corporations likey Disney because it's them who actually hold the influence to change legislation for literally half of the planet.
Maybe there are no "evil" intentions behind any of it, the end result is still something evil by its sophistication and sheer impact, hidden behind the mask of smiling, supposedly friendly, mouse.
https://priceonomics.com/how-mickey-mouse-evades-the-public-...
Best of all, this should serve as an example to other companies tempted to do similarly-terrible things. It probably won't, but it should.
[1] http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-nestle-water-lawsuit-2...
This sounds like a VP did something stupid and probably spent all of today getting reamed by CEO + SVPs.
Do you mind if I quote you on this?
My team has had a stressful time on our project and I think our manager could use a good laugh.
There isn't a coherent plan to make money -- or even accepting that as the primary goal -- at many or even most large companies, because people have different ideas of how you make money (particularly over anything more than 12 months).
My point was that one (S)VP that was tasked with handling a broad part of the business and blew a call badly, misusing broad authority over PR to retaliate over unfavorable coverage. This became public on Friday and PR had a statement ready on Tuesday. The timing makes me suspect that senior executives caught wind of it Friday evening/over the weekend and shut it down Monday. However, they stalled a day to get their PR ducks in a row, since they didn't see an immediate mass reaction on Monday.
Their one-day delayed PR release on an immediate (business-week) shutdown of that behavior came out concurrently with other PR releases and ended up looking reactive.
(Pure conjecture, but it smells like this.)
I doubt Disney backed down in a weekend if all of the senior executives were in agreement about strategy -- this sounds like the head of PR was given rope and decided he liked nooses.
> Do you mind if I quote you on this?
> My team has had a stressful time on our project and I think our manager could use a good laugh.
I'm not sure you intended this but the wording of this pretty offensive
This hasn't been my experience of large corporations, at all. Tons of things are measured besides profit, tons of other things are considered, and whole careers are staked on contentious debates over strategy.
Again, you seem to be treating Disney as a singular entity -- but it's probably more accurate to view it something like Europe: a squabbling mash of fiefdoms that happen to be loosely forced together, which occasionally go to war with each other, and have some sort of overarching body screaming at them that most fiefdoms half-ignore or drag their feet on implementing the directives of. (This really describes most large corporations -- which isn't surprising, considering that corporations emerged from that period of Europe.)
> I'm not sure you intended this but the wording of this pretty offensive
The implication was that it was laughably naive, yes. (I actually laughed when I read it.) Because viewing a corporation as a singular entity is a naive view: corporations aren't people, don't behave like people, and have internal conflicts that would send actual people to the mental hospital. You also seem to have a really strawman view of how executives operate, how corporate decisions are made, etc. It's like the comic book version of dramatized court decisions.
What we see here reeks of that model failing -- a snap decision made by a department VP which didn't align with the overall plan, immediately axed when the CEO + senior execs heard of it. I'd guess that there's probably a destroyed career, but Disney isn't interested in airing their dirty laundry, so we won't hear about it.
That actually happens a lot -- corporations firing staff for things the public thinks they should be fired for, because the corporate executives are actually of the same opinion about the (former) employees being incompetent in how they handled an issue. They usually just don't air it (and delay it a few months), because training the public to seek the blood of your staff when offended is absolutely insane.
> that is my point: if something is actively producing profit, the plan is to increase profits.
The company I work for likes to decrease short term profits for long term ecosystem health, because a vibrant system is fundamentally more valuable than extracting the maximum wealth in a straightforward way. I don't think we're alone or even particularly unusual in that belief -- though no corporation (including us) lives up to that ideal fully, either.
Corporations aren't angels, but they're not devils either. They're more like forests -- kind of dumb, not particularly coherent, capable of reshaping entire landscapes.
> The company I work for likes to decrease short term profits for long term ecosystem health, because a vibrant system is fundamentally more valuable than extracting the maximum wealth in a straightforward way.
And I bet if those profits stayed constant people would change their attitudes.
Additionally, if you are going to insult me I do not find it worth my time to respond to you again. Please try to be more cordial in your conversations here. I'm glad your company has backbone but in my pointless anecdotal evidence working for large companies, money speaks louder than any other point.
I wonder if it is some ego driven VP that made this call in the first place.
In the last week Apple prevented industry critics from accessing a new product early enough to have a review prepared before release. This move was a reversal of both their own previous behavior and industry standard. People didn't seem to care.
I am at a loss to explain why these reactions were so different. Is it because Apple has more goodwill? Is it because Apple is more opaque in their motivations? Is it because movie criticism is a more mature field with more consistent and well defined standards?
EDIT: As a response to the downvotes, here is the specific recent change that Apple made regarding the iPhone X [1]. And for those who say that it is different to punish an outlet for unrelated negative coverage, do I have to remind people how Apple reacted to the Gizmodo iPhone leak? [2]
[1] - https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2017/11/01/apple-iph...
[2] - http://www.mercurynews.com/2010/06/07/gizmodo-banned-from-ap...
Disney got a poor reaction because they retaliated against the Los Angeles Times for reporting on fishy financial business between the City of Anaheim, and the Walt Disney Company - the issue is not secrecy, its retaliation.
Apple also has a history of doing the exact same thing as Disney by shunning reviewers that they feel do not treat them fairly.
Either way, Apple has been accused of both.
I can't find the second case in the news -- who did Apple block from pre-release reviews? The closest case I can find is an employee fired for an NDA violation after his daughter posted an unauthorized review of prerelease hardware, but I don't think you're talking about that one.
Even if it's true, I am very suspicious when someone tries to sell me that these kinds of tactics are "right when I use them but wrong when you do".
Arguably they were justified in retaliating, but it's clearly a mudfight, and the newspapers had no problem getting into the mud with Disney and flexing their muscle. I don't see any high ground here.
IMO the high ground is fairly simple; You report on the fact that Disney is retaliating for a story they don't like and allow the Streisand effect to carry you to swift and decisive victory, without having to resort to extortion yourself.
I don't know if I need to explain that further or if it makes sense on its own. But I'm thinking along the lines of -- Journalists report the story, they don't make the story. The public, by reading their story, does the "job" of turning hard-hitting reporting into justice. Not the news organization itself.
While Disney attempts to punish the commercial arm of a newspaper by attacking their entertainment division, because of the actions of investigative journalists in a different field.
Disney is resorting to extortion, the newspaper is simply doing their job.
Now tell me... what happened next? If you consider it deeply, does it make you feel at all uncomfortable? Or because the "good guys won" are we just supposed to be giddy that Disney got rightly put in their place by the MSM?
Newspapers blocking Disney from a private function, from which Disney benefits but does not depend, is an asymmetric response to Disney blocking a newspaper's film screeners from screening its films, access on which the screeners depend. When we add in that Disney moved first and in response to truthful reporting to its detriment and in the public interest, it's pretty clear that this private dispute is perfectly appropriate.
Integrity is essential to the business of news reporting. Creating a culture where it’s assumed that only well behaved critics get to review movies undermines all newspapers and media.
¹ And many others, this is just an easy example.
This widespread reflex to go “both sides are equally bad!”, even when such equivocation is flatly absurd, is the thing that makes me most weep for the future of the human race.
Both sides demonstrated their moral flexibility for using extortion to get what they wanted. That much is clear.
What makes me "weep" is the abundance of logical fallacies deployed against my stated suspicion of the tactics used by a very powerful group to bring Disney to heel. Maybe they needed to be brought to heel, but I dislike the methods and again I am deeply suspicious of the coordinated exercise of power which was on display here.
On Tuesday, members of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the New York Film Critics Circle, the Boston Society of Film Critics and the National Society of Film Critics denounced Disney’s blackout of The Los Angeles Times. Each group voted to disqualify Disney’s movies from year-end award consideration unless the blackout was “publicly rescinded.”
If I'm not mistaken, those awards are worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Disney. It seemed like a significant escalation to me!
EDIT: I was an order of magnitude off in the estimated value of winning a half dozen Academy Awards.
EDIT: Might I add -- can you please explain why you say Disney "is attempting to use its might in order to completely bypass freedom of the press, and end oversight of what it's doing in the city council elections in Anaheim"?
At what point did Disney even come close to trying to take down the LA Times reporting, or imprison someone for reporting it, or somehow stop the oversight from happening? Clearly by trying to retaliate they only gave the story more legs. There was never a question of LA Times retracting their story. And "freedom of the press" doesn't mean that companies can't restrict access to their own products in response to negative coverage.
Upthread someone mentioned Apple did something very similar with iPhone X. Companies provide favorable access to favorable journalists all the time. To me, it was the MSM retaliation which raised an eyebrow. And again, maybe they did it for good cause, but it was eyebrow-raising [to me] none the less.
Or less literally, you think the news organizations simply had to threaten Disney with potentially billions (nix that, it's actually just hundreds of millions) of dollars of lost revenue by being excluded from the awards ceremonies in order to restore LA Times access to pre-screenings. It doesn't concern you at all that they would collectively make that threat / wield that might?
And this is all going on the assumption that the original LA Times reporting on Disney shenanigans in Anaheim was rock-solid and beyond reproach. Which of course I'm sure it was.
Even still I remain suspicious when the MSM bands together to effectively threaten losses of hundreds of millions in revenue [1] to a company which they think is misbehaving.
P.S. I feel like I'm in a weird rhetorical bubble here... I'd actually love it for someone to tell me exactly why I'm wrong without lobbing logical fallacies at me!
[1] - http://www.businessinsider.com/oscarnomics-2013-how-much-is-...
That is an accurate portrayal of the context, is it not? Would you have been happier if I wrote;
The newspapers band together to blackout Disney in response to Disney blacking out the LA Times in response to their hard hitting story about Disney.
It's a mouthful, and doesn't change at all my following statement as I see it.
But it's telling that you think... the threat to blacklist Disney from awards, unless they retract their blacklist of the LA Times, is justified, not because they blacklisted the LA Times, but because of why they blacklisted the LA Times. Namely, in response to the LA Times' piece critical of Disney.
So, a particularly violent response is justified by the MSM in this case, because Disney is retaliating against a news story which so far is being held up as factual. If they want to retaliate against a newspaper's dutiful and factual investigative reporting, then it's OK for the MSM to hit them where it hurts.
I actually get that people think this is justified and that the MSM actually did one right by defending themselves like this. I personally take no joy watching powerful interests try to out-leverage each other. A muscle exercised will be a muscle more quickly used and relied on in the future. I don't enjoy the mudfight and don't think either side comes out entirely clean.
(My last comment on this topic)
This wasn't the LA Times doing it. More like a film critic union.
Good for them.