Employment Issues on Public Air Waves
As I'm sure most of you have seen, popular radio host Don Imus was fired yesterday by NBC in response to his recent radio comments. Here's a link for those who have not followed the story: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,265441,00.html.
NBC's decision raises several questions concerning employer decisions related to whether or not individuals should be retained after discriminatory comments like that of Imus. Many have argued that Imus should not have been fired, and that the decision is a threat to free speech on the air waves. In other words, "let the free market punish Imus". If people no longer would like to listen to him, then he will indirectly be punished through poor ratings and station cancellations. What do you think of this?
Do you feel that employers in this industry have a duty to fire individuals (like Imus) in verbal situations that have gone too far?
Also, it seems to me that companies like General Electric (parent of NBC) do not really care about the man's comments; it is only about money. By that I mean that NBC would never have dropped Imus for the racist comment unless advertising sponsors cancelled deals (which they did). After all, Imus has dropped other crazy comments before, and nothing happened.
Should companies like GE be concerned about what their employees say on the airwaves as long as sponsors are happy and money keeps rolling in? I'm sure this issue will continue to arise as this is not the first time that an employee in the entertainment industry has been fired for unreasonable comments.
NBC's decision raises several questions concerning employer decisions related to whether or not individuals should be retained after discriminatory comments like that of Imus. Many have argued that Imus should not have been fired, and that the decision is a threat to free speech on the air waves. In other words, "let the free market punish Imus". If people no longer would like to listen to him, then he will indirectly be punished through poor ratings and station cancellations. What do you think of this?
Do you feel that employers in this industry have a duty to fire individuals (like Imus) in verbal situations that have gone too far?
Also, it seems to me that companies like General Electric (parent of NBC) do not really care about the man's comments; it is only about money. By that I mean that NBC would never have dropped Imus for the racist comment unless advertising sponsors cancelled deals (which they did). After all, Imus has dropped other crazy comments before, and nothing happened.
Should companies like GE be concerned about what their employees say on the airwaves as long as sponsors are happy and money keeps rolling in? I'm sure this issue will continue to arise as this is not the first time that an employee in the entertainment industry has been fired for unreasonable comments.
posted by Eric Mumm at
11:03 AM
1 Comments:
I think ideally, I would believe in the ability of the free market to keep material on the air, but in actually I think that morally, a duty is on the employers to keep the airwaves respectable. As a radio host, Don Imus was a highly visible representative of NBC and all the companies that back NBC, so I don't think that their action of firing him is really all that surprising. I do agree that they probably would not have done so if advertising sponsers had not dropped deals. If ratings were still high, NBC would more than likley side with the free market argument and change nothing. However, since a few sponsers did cancel, this is a chance for NBC to both remedy a bad financial decision and try to gain some ethics legitimacy in the eyes of the public.
I also think there is an important racial theme in this occurance. I have a hard time believing that Don Imus would have gotten fired if he himself were black, or if he had chosen to make a similar comment about a predominately white basketball team. I think this is a great example of how people make different decisions when race comes into play and don't even necessarily realize it.
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