Dumb PR

The Walt Disney Cos. are masters of marketing PR. That is why this is so dumb. No one wins when an organization tries to blackball the press. Certainly, Disney did not in this case, and it is unlikely to do so in the future. File this one under “What were they thinking.” If the company is upset with reporting on it, it should meet directly with the reporters and editors and work out a solution. In this case, Disney was angry with the LA Times for reporting on its relationship with the city of Anaheim where Disneyland is located. See “Company Town” below. The first rule of media relations is never to pick a public fight with the media. It is only on the rarest occasions where someone might try to punish a reporter for gross inaccuracies.That should be done quietly with an appeal to the journalist’s editors along with the accurate information that the reporter ignored. A company has every right to set the record straight, but for its own sake, it should not shut out the media.