Volume 8: Worshipping false idols
It has long since become a rite of winter for American corporations to use the Martin Luther King Day holiday as an annual opportunity to showcase the accomplishments of their corporate social responsibility initiatives. So it came as no surprise to see the trend continue yesterday, following a generational year of racial reckoning.
There is nothing wrong with this, per se, even if there is an obvious dissonance in the genuflection of for-profit corporations toward a man who was deeply suspicious of capitalism. Many brands do genuinely laudable things to promote racial justice, often without publicizing them, and while some may merely be looking to take advantage of the zeitgeist – as if "MLK" were just another item on the social agency's content calendar, like National Puppy Day – well, there is now an equally well-established counter-tradition of journalists dedicated to exposing their hypocrisy.
Perhaps we're settling into an equilibrium, but the volume of these brand communications continues to grow. That the ritual, along with the attendant score-keeping, has become so deeply rooted in the first place is symptomatic of a society that increasingly looks to CEOs for moral leadership.
News Feed
Business + Trust (link)
Last week Edelman released its latest global Trust Barometer, which revealed that business now exceeds NGOs, government and media as society's most trusted institution. What was most jarring about the report, which Edelman titled "Declaring Information Bankruptcy," was not so much the rise of business as the continued fall of media – particularly among Trump voters, whose trust in media scored 18 on a 100-point scale (by comparison, Russians, who de facto lack a free press, gave their media a score of 29).
The report, which recommended that CEOs "lead on issues from sustainability and systemic racism to upskilling," included a poll citing that 86% of people expect CEOs to speak out on social issues. More public engagement from business leaders on social issues isn't a bad thing, particularly if it helps create more accountability. But it's important to remember the inherent limits of business here. In other words, perhaps Nike is due for an update to its iconic "I am not a role model" commercial, only this time with its own CEO in the Charles Barkley role.
Olympics + Protest (link)
The Edelman report didn't poll for trust in Barkley or any other athlete, but if it had, one imagines they might rank closer to business than media these days. As I've previously written, NBA players now have a prominent voice in the national political conversation, and last month the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee moved to extend that status to the athletes who actually represent the country in competition. Backing the recommendations of a Council on Racial and Social Justice it formed last summer, the USOPC supported an end to the International Olympic Committee rule barring athlete protests and announced that it "will not sanction Team USA athletes for respectfully demonstrating in support of racial and social justice for all human beings."
Seven years ago, when I was part of NBC's Sochi Olympics production team, we dedicated long stretches of an Opening Ceremony prep meeting to the possibility that Belle Brockhoff, an openly gay snowboarder from Australia and outspoken critic of Russia's LGBTQ policies, might protest during the Parade of Nations. She ultimately didn't, but given the IOC rule and the legacy of social justice protest at the Olympics, the possibility of another Tommie Smith & John Carlos moment was too significant not to prepare for.
It never occurred to me then, but in that same parade of nearly 3,000 athletes there were likely many who harbored views diametrically opposed to Brockhoff's similarly biting their tongues. That was a thought I couldn't get out of my mind when it was revealed that swimmer Klete Keller, a three-time Olympian who won two gold medals as a relay teammate of Michael Phelps, was among those who seized the U.S. Capitol on January 6. Keller's involvement made the USOPC's recommendations four weeks earlier feel prescient: in endorsing racial and social justice protests, it also actively distinguished such sanctioned speech from "to-be-defined 'divisive demonstrations' – including, but not limited to, currently prohibited acts of hate speech, racist propaganda, political statements and discrimination."
However commendable the dichotomy, the challenge, as any internet platform seeking to moderate content has discovered, lies in the often blurry line between common sense and censorship.
Pornhub + Content Moderation (link)
Amid the recent focus on Twitter and Facebook's moves to bar President Trump from their platforms and the global debate about the power of private companies to regulate political speech, another content moderation story has flown largely under the radar. Following an investigation by The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof into the scourge of child pornography and other exploitative content on Pornhub, the porn platform that is one of the most-visited websites in the world, the company swiftly moved to purge, by one estimate, 80% of the videos from its site.
It was a shocking announcement, in large part because of the stark and refreshing contrast it marked from the chronic inaction of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other major internet platforms. Sometimes a product is so dangerous that the only thing to do is shut it down completely, and assess the collateral damage to the business later (Johnson & Johnson's famous Tylenol crisis management remains a model here).
I would say kudos to Pornhub, but I don't quite think that's the right framing. This is, after all, the company responsible for perhaps the most egregious brand MLK Day post of all time. So let's instead think of this as a triumph of accountability journalism, and a good reason to restore our collective trust in the institution of media.
Content Recommendation Algorithm
- Watch: Minari. I've tried to take to heart the advice of Bong Joon-Ho, the director of "Parasite," who urged us last year at the Oscars to "overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles." Minari, a story about a young South Korean family trying to create a life in rural Arkansas, is one of the treasures waiting on the other side.
- Read: He Just Wanted to Play Catch. They Got Relief From Troubled Times. A wonderful feature on a game of catch in the neighborhood, by New York Times reporter Mike Wilson. Reading this felt like watching "Ted Lasso."
- Listen: Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou. I recently became aware of Guèbrou, the 97-year-old Ethiopian nun and bluesy-classical piano virtuoso, and she's been a constant companion in my headphones ever since. Her music also provides the soundtrack to the recently released documentary "Time," which would make a terrific MLK week screening.
Note: This is the eighth edition of the Strange Bedfellows newsletter. You can find the others and a link to subscribe here. If you enjoy it, please consider sharing it with someone you know.