Does Refusing Rolling Stone Magazine's Use of a Criminal's Picture For Marketing Purposes Violate Corporate Social Responsibility?

In 2013, the editors at Rolling Stone must have been kicking themselves after several retail chains announced that they would not be selling the issue that displays Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as a young hottie. Criminal charges had been made against him for the Boston marathon bombing that took place in April of that year. Selling a magazine by playing off the good looks of a terrorist was more than several—but not all—retailers could stand. Were the offended retailers being socially responsible, or is the matter of CSR not as clear-cut as has typically been assumed.

This picture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was on the cover of an issue of the Rolling Stone. From a marketing perspective, why might the editors have selected this particular photo? To which market segment might the choice be oriented? Image Source: hdwallpaperfresh.com  

Tedeschi Foods, a grocery-store chain based in New England, issued a rather emotional statement for a company: “Tedeschi Food Shops supports the need to share the news with everyone, but cannot support actions that serve to glorify the evil actions of anyone. With that being said, we will not be carrying this issue of Rolling Stone. Music and terrorism don’t mix!”[1] Had Rolling Stone’s editors sought to glorify the evil actions of an alleged bomber, or had the intent been to profit from them? If the latter, couldn’t the news companies that splashed pictures of Tsarnaev on the television screen (while not showing commercials) be accused of the very same thing? Music and terrorism may not mix, but selling news and showcasing bombers apparently do. Is the Rolling Stones in the business of news or music?
Rite Aid issued a statement that it too would not be selling the paper, “Out of respect for those affected by the Boston Marathon Bombing.” CVS issued a similar statement. “As a company with deep roots in New England and a strong presence in Boston, we believe this is the right decision out of respect for the victims of the attack and their loved ones.”[2] Did the CVS executives really want to respect the victims, or did the underlying rationale have more to do with the positive PR impact on CVS’s image from “showing” compassion and respect in line with societal norms? The phrases “deep roots in New England” and “strong presence in Boston” can be read as advertisements using pathos, or emotion, to persuade New Englanders and Bostonians to identify with, and thus buy from, the “hometown” company.
Walgreens simply stated that it would not be selling the issue. K-Mart had a similar statement, according to the Huffington Post. Ironically, those two retailers might have been more principled in the decision, as they were less oriented to profiting from their respective announcements.
Bucking this collective push away from the controversial cover, the 7-Eleven convenience-store chain announced that it would be selling the issue. This decision raises the question of whether companies should have identical social policies, given that the relevant societal norm does not differ.[3] Did the 7-Eleven executives make the wrong decision, given the relevant societal norm? Or does that norm conflict with another—namely, that consumers should be the ones to make the decision through their purchasing decisions. The other retailers preempted the consumers from “voting with their wallets.” In other words, the societal norm against popularizing people who did bad things, allegedly or not, conflicts with the value of economic liberty in a market economy. Which is more in line with societal values in the U.S.:  compassion for victims or economic freedom? It depends on which value is or ought to be prioritized. In advocating a fit with societal norms and values, corporate social responsibility cannot say which norm or value should be prioritized—only that the company should closely fit itself with whichever societal norm or value is “picked.” To privilege particular societal norms or values over others as if the emphasis were mandated or implied in being socially responsible makes corporate social responsibility dogmatic in the sense of being arbitrary. That is, it makes CSR ideologically prescriptive rather than a theory explaining why only some companies survive in the long run and a tool being used by managers to steer their companies through choppy waters.
In terms of the Rolling Stone cover, it may indeed be arbitrary for retail chains to boycott the issue after television news networks made so much money off the story by showing the bomber’s picture. In other words, the double-standard may point to the arbitrariness in the corporate social responsibility movement. On the other hand, the retailers (excepting 7-Eleven) may have drawn the line at the magazine cover because the particular head shot together with the Rolling Stone context may have been designed to sell the bomber as a sexy guy—something the television coverage did not do. Whereas profiting by showing various pictures strains a societal norm but does not break it, profiting by sexualizing a young terrorist may indeed cross the line.
At any rate, this case study demonstrates that corporations do indeed differ with respect to how or whether to be socially responsible. That is to say, social responsibility is a judgment call on which people can and do differ.

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1. “Rolling Stone’s ‘The Bomber’ Issue Banned By CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid And Kmart,” The Huffington Post, June 17, 2013.

2. “Rolling Stone’s ‘The Bomber’ Issue Banned By CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid And Kmart,” The Huffington Post, June 17, 2013.
3. This assumption does not apply to the environment of international business, as different societies have differing societal norms on a given topic.

Does Opportunity Justify Economic Inequality?

From 1993 to 2010, the incomes of the richest 1 percent of Americans grew 58 percent while the rest had a 6.4 percent increase.  In 2010, the first year of an economic recovery, the top 1 percent of Americans captured 93% of the income gains. Beyond the danger to the American republics in there being an economic elite so far removed from the vast majority of the population is the question of whether the trend is baleful, economically speaking. It is not clear that even such an income gain being snagged by so few registered in the minds of the general populous as a problem. The key to any concern would seem to be whether opportunity for the many is compromised as a result of extreme economic inequality.

In 2011, inequality was not exactly the top priority of American voters: only 17 percent thought it is extremely important for the government to try to reduce income and wealth inequality, according to a Gallup survey. That is about half the percent who said reigniting economic growth was crucial. However, 29 percent said it was extremely important for the government to increase equality of opportunity. More significant, 41 percent said that there was not much opportunity in America, up from 17 percent in 1998. The question is whether the concurrent increase in economic inequality was viewed as causing the decrease in opportunity. According to David Hume’s naturalist fallacy, a correlation does not itself mean a causal relationship exists. The fact that economic inequality was increasing as opportunity was decreasing does not in itself mean that the increasing inequality was reducing opportunity. There might be a causal relationship, but more is needed to support it than a correlation.

According to the New York Times, comparisons across countries “suggest a fairly strong, negative link between the level of inequality and the odds of advancement across the generations. The link makes sense: a big income gap is likely to open up other social breaches that make it tougher for those lower down the rungs to get ahead. And that is exactly what appears to be happening in the United States, where a narrow elite is peeling off from the rest of society by a chasm of wealth, power and experience.” Additionally, that elite can use its wealth as power to reserve the opportunities itself. For instance, donations to universities (and lobbying government officials) could be used to keep financial-aid-based admissions down to a certain level such that there are plenty of spots available for children of the well-off. Appeals seemingly in the interest of the masses can even be utilized, as in wanting to reduce subsidized student loan programs because students are suffering from too much debt.

In my view, the business-government dynamic is crucial to why increasing economic inequality is harmful both politically and economically. Minimizing the harm to reduced opportunity ignores the injustice that comes with the inequality itself. Wealth can easily be made into power, which in turn can be used in political, economic and societal realms in self-serving ways. The primacy of opportunity assumes that anyone can be rich if he or she just works hard enough. Both on account of the way the system is designed and the differences between people, not everyone will succeed even if given the opportunity.

Furthermore, conditioning one’s objection to economic inequality in society on whether one’s opportunity is affected can be viewed as self-centered as well as rather narrow because one is indifferent to the negative effects of the inequality on others apart from any decreased opportunity as long as one believes that one’s own opportunity is not adversely affected. Put another way, too many Americans are willing to look the other way on how the elite can unfairly use their advantage aside from restricting opportunity. The right of the elite to so much wealth is tacitly acknowledged as long as opportunity is still thought to exist.  As long as it does, society has no right to take from the rich even if they compromise the republics themselves. This is a very minimalist notion of social contract—one that the 1% benefit from. This is hardly an accident—political ideology established in society being in the interest of the relatively few beneficiaries of the vast majority of income gain.

Therefore, whether increasing economic inequality causes less opportunity for the masses is a question that can be relegated to the more important question of whether the inequality itself is inherently unfair and/or a threat to the republics, the economy, and even society. How the wealth has been and is gained as well as used are relevant to the ethical question of fairness, and thus to whether the concentration of wealth is legitimate. Crucially, a focus on opportunity misses this point. Besides its ethical dimension, absolute or relative economic inequality could be harmful in building up pressure of resentment and even revolution, as evinced in the Occupy Wall Street Movement (which has been safely marginalized—with its own complicity). As the interests of the elite and the masses diverge and the elite (e.g., Goldman Sachs) gains more and more power, the strangling of the lower and lower-middle classes may ensue—a development that could not be good for a society’s stability. A focus on opportunity recalibrated in terms of being promoted to manage a McDonalds’ restaurant misses this point. In short, we are missing the iceberg coming up in front of our ship because we are satisfied if we can still get a deck chair.

Source:

Eduardo Porter, “Inequality Undermines Democracy,” The New York Times, March 21, 2012. 

Social Media Companies: Is Blocking Political-Protester Content a Political or Business Decision?

The question of the role of social media internet companies as protesters have used social-media platforms to communicate before and during protests exploded on the world stage in "Arab Spring" going in the Middle East in early 2011. Lest it be presumed that the companies' respective policies were relevant only in terms of what content (or users) was allowed and how that content could impact events on the ground, the policies themselves reflect the claim made by the West of what liberty means. In other words, if social media companies were (allowed to be) oppressive or otherwise not respectful of their customers, the overall message to the oppressed in the Middle East could not have been that greater freedom is indeed possible because it exists in the West. Lest our own private sector unwittingly undercut the words and efforts of the protesters, we might want to use this case to ask if we couldn’t be freer too.

According to Ebele Okobi-Harris, the director of the business and human rights program at Yahoo, which owned Flickr at the time, the case of el-Hamalwy, an Egyptian activist whose uploaded pictures of security agents were abruptly taken down by Flickr staff, prompted internal discussions at the company about whether Flickr should reconsider its approach. What if the photos had been his own and he had not yet backed them up? Flickr’s abrupt and unannounced action suddenly seems quite oppressive. Fortunately, managers at Flickr were at least thinking about the issue. “As the uses of these social networks evolve,” Harris said, “we have to start thinking about how to create rules on how to apply rules that also facilitate human rights activists using these tools.”[1]

Harris “pointed to the challenges of balancing the existing rules and terms of service for users with the new ways that activists are using these tools. One challenge is whether a company should maintain its commitment to remain neutral about content, even when politicized content could offend users or even put people in danger. ‘Does a company take responsibility for the content?’”[2] For instance, what, el-Hamalawy asked, would Flickr do if a group that opposes abortion wanted to post photographs of doctors who perform abortions? In his own case, el-Hamalawy “said Flickr’s decision to take down the photos left him not only frustrated and angry but also terrified. ‘Everyone knew that I had released those photos,’ he said. ‘Then the photos were gone. I couldn’t sleep. I was thinking that at any minute, they were going to come for me.’”[3] Would Flickr managers have been responsible for el-Hamalawy’s death had it been occasioned by Flickr’s action?  Or was it his own act in uploading the photos in the first place that put his life at risk? To be sure, Flickr should at least have notified him before taking down his pictures; the company was certainly responsible for causing him fear. However, this incident seems more like bad business to me than unethical conduct on Flickr’s part. Whether a customer is a protester oppressed by a dictatorship or simply a novice photographer who has uploaded her own pictures, there does appear to have been reason to withhold one’s trust from Flickr.

Beyond the matter of bad customer relations—which seems to be getting worse in American business--the question of whether social media, which has included Facebook, Flickr, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube among others, has been unwittingly biased toward oppressive governments even if only from a desire to maintain control over its site must be addressed. 

In early 2011, it became clear that social-media companies were increasingly being used by activists and pro-democracy forces, especially in the Middle East and North Africa, to the chagrin of the respective governments. As Harris asked of Flickr, does a social media company have responsibility for the content?  Furthermore, should such a company be susceptible to the influence of angered governments, whether in identifying users or barring their content?

According to The New York Times at the time, the “new role for social media has put these companies in a difficult position: how to accommodate the growing use for political purposes while appearing neutral and maintaining the practices and policies that made these services popular in the first place."[4] In November 2007, YouTube had removed videos flagged as “inappropriate” by a community member "because they showed a person in Egypt being tortured by the police. They were uploaded by Wael Abbas, another Egyptian blogger involved in opposing torture in Egypt. After a public outcry, YouTube managers reviewed the videos and restored them.”[5] Had the managers been influenced by Egypt in taking down the video, the company would have effectively taken sides in the Egyptian dispute between its government and people. 

Prime facie, removing videos or photos of the police torturing one or several of their own citizens is pro-authoritarianism and anti-liberty. In other words, the very act enables aggression by states against their own people, whose liberty is treated as a wanton step-child. YouTube's initial decision to pull the videos back in 2011 was in this sense a political decision. Accordingly, it should not have been labeled as simply a business decision. Seen in this light, YouTube's employees enjoyed power beyond what working on business entails and thus entitles. 

Alternatively, the issue could simply be whether a warning notice is appropriate given the graphic nature of anti-government material. I made the horrible mistake, for example, of watching the slow beheading of a Western hostage by a terrorist group in the Middle East. Even a year or two later, I could still hear the man’s raspy voice shouting for dear life as his throat was being gradually deprived of air. Because I ignored the “graphic content” warning,  perhaps the issue facing YouTube in 2011 does indeed go beyond whether such a warning should apply. In my case, my curiosity got the better of me. Should YouTube have been responsible for protecting me from myself? That could be good business, as I stayed away from the platform for a while because I realized what emotional power "real" videos could have. Yet this would open YouTube employees and their managers up to grasping what is actually political power, at the very least if the subject matter itself is political. A blurry line exists between business and political power in the business realm. Power-aggrandizement can take advantage of the discretion. Perhaps social media managements could limit their intervention only to extremely graphic content, with review taking place in the company in the particularly harsh cases.  Still, in a free society, citizens ultimately must take responsibility for ignoring warnings.

Regarding Facebook, The New York Times reported on March 26, 2011 that the company “has remained mostly quiet about its increasing role among activists in the Middle East who use the site to connect dissident groups, spread information about government activities and mobilize protests. But Facebook is now finding itself drawn into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and has been pushed to defend its neutral approach and terms of service to some supporters of Israel, including an Israeli government official. Yuli Edelstein, an Israeli minister of diplomacy and diaspora affairs, sent a letter [in March, 2011] to Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, asking him to remove a Facebook page created that March named the Third Palestinian Intifada." The page, which called for an uprising in the occupied Palestinian territory that May, had more than 240,000 members at the time. "As Facebook’s C.E.O. and founder, you are obviously aware of the site’s great potential to rally the masses around good causes, and we are all thankful for that," Mr. Edelstein wrote. "However, such potential comes hand in hand with the ability to cause great harm, such as in the case of the wild incitement displayed on the above-mentioned page." Facebook had, so far, not removed the page. The administrators of the page were not advocating violence so the page fell within the company’s definition of acceptable speech, company officials said. "We want Facebook to be a place where people can openly discuss issues and express their views, while respecting the rights and feelings of others," said Andrew Noyes, a spokesman for public policy at the company. Facebook was trying to maintain its neutrality without getting political. 

The problem is, “wild incitement” could pertain to the pro-democracy rallies that had been taking place throughout the Middle East at the time. Even if violence were being called for in the Intifada, would Facebook (or Instigram) remove such content if it had been put up by an Egyptian or Libyan protester?  More pointedly, what if a page or photo referred to “wild incitement” in the midst of being attacked by government troops or police? How far removed is an occupied people to such intimidation on a daily basis? Should they be barred from tweeting, “Come help me at X intersection b/c police are beating my elderly parents”? The staff at Facebook were smart not to intervene in disputes between a government and its people. If anything, an America-based company should have a bias in favor of liberty in taking the side of the oppressed, for the United States came into existence from British oppression. Relatedly, the U.S. Government itself acts in concert with its own beginning whenever it takes the side of a people protesting against governmental oppression. Of course, American companies acting in favor of American values make de facto political judgments and decisions whose application in other cultures may be ill-fitting or even inappropriate. 

Yet it is possible that particular company policies are inherently to the advantage of vengeful governments and thus a threat to Facebook’s customers under those governments. For example, The New York Times reported at the time that “Human rights advocates have also criticized Facebook for not being more flexible with some of its policies, specifically its rule requiring users to create accounts with their real names. Danny O’Brien, the Internet advocacy coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, cited the case of Michael Anti, an independent journalist and blogger from China whose Facebook account was deactivated in January because he had not used his state-given name to create it. In addition to losing the ability to publish and communicate on Facebook, and not wanting to use his real name because of China’s strict rules governing freedom of speech and harsh response to those activists who violate them, he . . . lost the contact information for thousands of people in his Facebook community. ‘One can’t expect all of these services to provide everything to everyone,’ said Mr. O’Brien. ‘I think that part of the solution is to provide people with a dignified way of leaving the service.’”

O’Brien was giving too much credit to Facebook. It is insufficient to expect Facebook to have merely provided its customers with a dignified way to leave (or be deprived of service). In addition, Facebook ought to have respected the preference of some of its customers to anonymity, especially if their respective real names could bring them into harm's way. Facebook would have still had those customers’ contact info (more of which could be demanded and verified in such cases), so anonymity would not have been an excuse to get away with unethical or illegal conduct, such as publicly defaming someone by making false claims. At the very least, I contend that a person’s anonymity being refused is a basis for that person to lie ethically about being on Facebook. 

Moreover, Facebook’s insistence at the time that real names must be used adds to the argument that the U.S. Constitution should be amended to include an explicit right to privacy. Much of the criticism of Roe v. Wade is actually that the justices “found” such a right being implicit in that constitution. Even people in favor of making abortion legal could (and have) raise the objection. Another entails whether the decision should be federal or have remained with the States. 

While the problem regarding Facebook's insistence that customers use their real names may have had implications for U.S. constitutional law, bad business (i.e., bad customer service) may have been Facebook's underlying problem. In fact, Facebook having had respect for its potential and actual customers who preferred anonymity could have sent a message stronger than any from the protesters or human rights advocates in the Middle East, namely: “Look over here! Real freedom is indeed possible!”

1. Jennifer Preston, “Ethical Quandary for Social Sites,” The New York Times, March 27, 2011.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.