During the annual Disney shareholder meeting, CEO Bob Iger faced questions regarding his company’s constant left-wing bias both at ESPN, and elsewhere among Disney’s many entertainment holdings. However, Iger merely brushed off the claims of bias and refused to address the problems endemic in his company.
Iger faced a probing question offered by Justin Danhof, the general counsel at the National Center for Public Policy Research. Danhof brought up Disney employee Joy Behar’s hate for Christians on her Disney-owned ABC show The View, and he probed Iger on the anti-Trump bias and hate for conservatives seen on a nearly daily basis at ESPN.
“Trust in the American news media is at historic lows,” Danhof said during his time at the microphone. “Spending shareholder resources to fight against a basic request for an honesty policy will only cause distrust in Disney’s media to grow,” he said.
Danhof specifically pointed to ESPN, saying:
For example, ESPN has seemingly become a 24/7 anti-Trump tirade network which reached its pinnacle last fall when host Jemele Hill called President Donald Trump a white supremacist. Mr. Iger, you admitted to intervening to make sure that ESPN’s leadership didn’t fire her for these defamatory remarks. What kind of message does that send to other company employees? Just one last month, Hill again publicly declared that President Trump and his supporters are white supremacists.
The conservative activist then brought up Joy Behar’s harsh criticisms of Christianity, and other points, concluding that it seems clear Disney is willing to hurt its financial bottom line in order to push liberal policies.
Danhof closed asking Iger the following:
What do you have to say to the tens of millions of Christians and President Trump supporters that your networks have so blatantly offended and ascribed hateful labels?
Specifically, do you think that having a Christian faith is akin to a dangerous mental illness? And do you believe that President Trump and his supporters are white supremacists?
The Disney CEO’s reply wasn’t much of a reply. Indeed, Iger just waved off all the questions.
Iger started his reply saying that Behar’s constant attack on Christians is no big deal, because she has apologized “directly” to Vice President Mike Pence.
As to ESPN, Iger said that Jemele Hill has already been warned and was also once suspended for her behavior. But to the charge that as CEO he supports calling Trump voters “white supremacists,” Iger refused to respond. Iger just waved off the criticism as unimportant and a mere “disagreement” of opinion.
“And in terms of your depiction of ESPN and a variety of other things you said,” Iger explained, “I know you’ve been to other meetings in the past. You and I have agreed to disagree on these issues, not that some of the things that you’ve raised don’t have some validity, but I don’t agree with everything that you said.”
That is a non-answer if there ever was one. So, in the end, neither shareholders nor customers yet know if Bob Iger has any problem with the anti-Christian bias and the hate for Donald Trump and his voters that appears daily over the many entertainment concerns owned by his corporation, Disney.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.
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