Mickey Mouse, caught in another controversy
On Monday, Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis signed a controversial bill dubbed “Don’t Say ‘Gay.'” The bill earned this moniker because, according to the Tampa Bay Times, “it prohibits instruction related to gender identity or sexual orientation in kindergarten through third grade and potentially restricts such instruction for older kids.” During the discussion leading up to the bill’s passage, many workers at The Walt Disney Company, a huge presence in Florida with its Walt Disney World theme park and nearby hotels, a shopping mall and other properties, protested Disney’s lack of opposition to the bill, even to the point of walking off the job. Disney has a reputation as a LBGTQ-friendly company, both as to its many employees and to customers, including so-called “Gay Days” at its theme parks. These employees were quite upset, therefore, when Disney did not officially oppose the “Don’t Say Gay” bill as it was being drafted and discussed.
After being caught flat-footed, Disney is now attempting to atone for its previous cowardice regarding the small-minded new Florida law. And the headlines from two different media outlets about Disney’s latest actions (which reasonably can be classified as too little, too late) tell quite a different story. First, there is Yahoo! Finance, which is hardly a liberal media outlet and tends to reflect corporate opinion. Their matter-of-fact headline yesterday was:
Disney to fight ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill: ‘It should never have been signed into law.’
However, over at right wing Fox Business (and their sister company, the Wall Street Journal), it was quite a different story:
Disney has been outspoken on DeSantis’ parental rights bill but silent on Uyghur genocide.
Note how Fox uses the right wing spin on what the bill does. Their headline also alludes to the fact that Disney does business in China, which of course has a poor human rights record. But it’s safe to say that Fox doesn’t spend much time worrying about Uyghur genocide in China generally, or human rights violations by others (including Vladimir Putin, or Donald Trump for that matter) around the world. Rather, Fox is trying to whack its entertainment competitor Disney for taking a political stand, no matter how late and how mild, against a Republican Governor’s Culture War law.
This is just one of many such examples that occur in our mainstream media every day. So along with examining the source and content of news stories to check whether they are politically slanted, it’s a good idea to start by reading the headlines themselves very carefully.
Photo by Ross Hawkes, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/nQBjnZ
