A recent CBS television program in the U.S. raised eyebrows and caused controversy within its culturally elite market segment. Ta-Nehisi Coates was interviewed on his new book, which includes his vehement resentment of Jews in Israel. Coates is African American, famous for his 2014 article in The Atlantic that America, because of its white racism and slavery, owes African Americans lots of money as reparations. The CBS host – Tony Dokoupil – was not sympathetic in his questions to Coates and drew attention to Coates’ prejudice.
That put CBS in an awkward position of taking sides. As the old movement song asked: “Which side are you on Boy, which Side are you on? Do you march with Martin Luther King or do you “Tom” for Ross Barnett?”
Was CBS selling negative feelings about Israel and Jews or was it defending the cause of Israel as a Jewish homeland? Hard to have it both ways.
But taking a side is selling a cultural product.
The interview led to dissension, recriminations and tensions in the CBS staff over what the company’s business should be, over what journalism is. Really, the in-house debate was over the business model of CBS. What is the product that CBS is selling – objectivity or emotions and prejudices? What customer base do they seek to please? Is that chosen product line profitable? What brand proposition does a company market when it associates itself with a cause or a lifestyle? Is CBS selling news or entertainment?
One might argue that as long as CBS is meeting the needs of customers – a stakeholder constituency – it is a moral capitalist. Or not? What if its customers – like industrial polluters or individual drug users and alcoholics – generate negative impacts on society? Some people’s values and beliefs make them despicable to others.
When values and lifestyles become products, business risks can rise, for not everyone likes every cultural or political value or personal lifestyle. The business can follow its own values, but at an opportunity cost – it might make more money by selling the morality or the politics which are preferred by a different customer constituency.
But in closed societies, say theocracies or under intolerant authoritarian regimes that censor speech and seek to keep thinking straight and narrow, the choice of a business model is easier to come by: just do what the regime wants and don’t make waves by stirring up values and different opinions