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Will ABC News’ “Made in America” Series Avoid Their Boss, Disney?
This weekend ABC News is heavily promoting its special “Made in America” series that will run all week. From the promotions, it looks like the series will focus partly on what happens when a U.S. household seeks to remove all furnishings and other items from its home that are not made in America. Such a house apparently becomes nearly-barren and it’s no easy task to restock it with non-imported items.
Let me be clear: As long as they don’t descend into xenophobia, I applaud ABC News for devoting energy and time to this hugely important issue.
The U.S. public would benefit from knowing whether the household products we commonly consume are assembled in the U.S. or are imported -- often from countries whose vicious policies on unions and workers rights would make Wisconsin Gov. Walker look like Mother Jones.
But one question I can’t wait to see answered: will ABC News investigate the products sold by Disney, the mega-corporation that owns ABC?
Because it’s too easy to blame U.S. consumers for buying cheap stuff from China or Bangladesh or Honduras.
What would be more helpful is a TV news series that scrutinizes the powerful U.S. corporations that make decisions every day determining what products mainstream Americans have access to.
I scrutinized Disney myself by going to DisneyStore.com -- “Official Site for Disney Merchandise.” The first 40 products I looked at were all listed as “Imported.”
Within each product category atop the Disney Store’s homepage, I checked the first six items. First came the "Girls” category: from the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Set to the Tangled Rapunzel Doll to the Rapunzel Swimsuit, all six products were described as “imported.”
I found the same when I checked the “Boys” category. Ditto for “Adults” and “Characters” and “Toys & Games” and “Home & Décor.”
It wasn’t until I was deep into “Pins, Art & Collectibles” -- in other words, the 41st listing I checked -- that I found an item listed as made in-country: “Mickey's Dream Limited-Edition Giclée.” (Later I found other products listed as “Made in USA,” but a tiny percentage.)
So I’m looking forward to the “Made in America” series this week. It would be great to see an ABC journalist interviewing a Disney executive on the choices the company makes in what products it offers its consumers.
And it would be even better if ABC journalists later went overseas to report on the conditions for workers in those foreign factories who produce Disney’s toys and dolls and t-shirts.
I’m not holding my breath.
21 Comments so far
Show AllIMAGINE this. Disney decides to brings ALL its manufacturing back to the US and create jobs for Americans. They also decide that their corporate doesn't need more pay, in fact, they can take a profit cut in order to support Americans.
Imagine the PR that would cause. But, as you can see yearly, Disney doesn't have to do a damn thing for anybody because they are raking it in because people just don't care. They keep buying the same crap at dollar stores and walmart.
I have cleansed my shopping list for years just so I don't have to buy foreign crap unless it is Fair Trade, a nasty word in DC. Well, we need Fair Trade in the US, for everyone, and by god, we're going to get it.
The next scenario that has occured to my crazy brain...the government will give these giant whorporates billions of $$$ to bring their companies home. HHHaaaaa
and then give them another tax break. My god, it's a never ending round of whorporate to government to whorporate payoffs.
Please read the Rolling Stone article..'.Why ISN'T Wall Street in Jail?'
Also: Please see the Oscar-winning documentary, INSIDE JOB!
This series, "Made in America", will stop short of asking the important question: Why did manufacturing leave the United States? It will be purely descriptive and will offer no prescriptions aimed at bringing industry back. Some of those prescriptions might include: issuing licenses for corporations to sell within the United States, licenses earned by paying workers a fair wage, maintaining safe working conditions, and respecting environmental regulations; imposing tariffs on companies abroad that fail to behave responsibly; removing all tax incentives designed to reward companies for moving operations abroad; aggressively auditing companies that do move operations overseas; instituting legal action against companies who were given tax breaks for building in the United States--only to leave a few years later; requiring labeling on all items telling the country of origin; supplying credit to American companies that would compete with foreign companies in specified areas like electronics. The United States could re-industrialize given the political will. Trends are moving in the right direction, but we are still a few years away from achieving success.
My small town in northern Michigan recently put out bids to run trash collection and recycling. The winner was NOT Waste Management (which had the lowest bid) but a local trash hauler which had set up a recycling plant in town. The commitment of the company to employ locally tipped the balance. That is the kind of thinking that will turn things around. The low bid is not necessarily the one that should be accepted. You have to look at all factors.
I am having a book of local history published and have rejected the idea of printing it in China where costs are lower. Instead, I will have the printing done in Wisconsin--at a higher rate than I could secure by printing it abroad. Lots of people are making decisions like this--the old capitalist notion that price alone guides decision-making is being abandoned, though Walmart and Disney will try to keep it afloat as long as they can.
You got it, drosera!
Look at ALL factors. Include the Social Costs to the community. THEN, it can work.
Let's make sure all US companies who enjoy benefits here PAY the SOCIAL costs (re-education, rent subsidies, training, medical needs etc.) lost to the workers in the communities that were affected when the companies left town.
Let's have an enlightened national policy which REQUIRES all companies to show a "Social Bottom Line" as part of their costs of doing business. If they can't make a profit while covering the costs they incur in the community, then they are not the ones we need leading our commerce.
The way it is now, most companies moving operations overseas dump all the Social Costs on the communities and governments (local, state or federal) and then have the gall to fund campaigns asking for smaller government.
You say: "The United States could re-industrialize given the political will." I couldn't agree more.
Of course, we have a "2-party" system designed to make sure that political will never develops — or quashes it if it does.
Both party's fairy tale narratives about how life and economics work, leave no effective role for real working people, other than to toil at what they are told. Participation in decisions? No siree!
Excellent comments by all. Unfortunately it would probably require a trip to Disney's Fantasyland in order for these suggestions to have any chance to be implemented.
equally interesting on the Disney site is legal notices page listing the holdings - I had NO IDEA!
http://disney.go.com/guestservices/legalnotices?ppLink=pp_wdig
I am reminded that Disney got his start making propaganda films for the depts of state, defense and labor. Vociferously anti-union, in Jan 1941, Disney was presented with 400 signatures of animators who sought to join the Cartoonists Guild.
for example:
Last year: US Department of Labor recovers more than $433,000 in back wages for Walt Disney World employees
http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/whd/whd20101178.htm
Monsanto has been the corporate sponsor of many attractions at Disneyland and Walt Disney World.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto
revealing, early promotional video for disney land - listen to quote by James W. Rause at minute 3:32 lauding it as 'urban design'...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkT2iLetCTc
the efficiency of DL totally devoid of critique of what it means when resources are so celebrated for the massive success of surrounding the individual with a construct designed to (expensively) immerse one's free time in manufactured representation of historical fantasy, etc. as entertainment and heritage. Fast forward to Washington...
Good for you Jeff!
I will not stand in line for an Disney Product. He was a ruthless, backstabbing, red baiting SOB that worked undercover for the commie searcher's of Amerika.
If you want to make a change starting today, there are places one can go to get US made items. Ed Schultz is always advertising on his radio show a web site called madeinusaforever.com, where every item on it is made entirely in this country. Maybe if we all patronized sites like that and found more of them, we can start to turn this BULLSHIT around.
Well, yeah, ok, but... that's still a PERSONAL solution that, while it makes you feel good, does not begin to address the underlying policy problems that have a massive effect.
I think it is illustrative of our country at large that one of the big three news outfits is owned by the biggest distributor of bullshit in the world. MICKEY GOOFY, MICKEY GOOFY. I want to throw up.
is mr. cohen trying to make ABC relevant again in the brave new world?
what thinking being really gives a damn about what ABC does?????
An irony here is that ABC would not even exist except for the government's breaking up of NBC's monopoly in 1941. Previously NBC had several sub-networks including , the main Red Network, and the smaller, more culturally oriented Blue Network. After the split up, the Blue Network was purchased by another group who then purchased the ABC name, and it was reborn in the form it existed in for many years. Rabidly fascist Disney is not, at the end of the day, quite as self-reliant as it makes itself out to be. Perhaps it ought to dress Snow White up as a welfare queen with her own "Entitlements Land" at Disney World. She would have to be black to uphold their old and enduring racist and misogynist themes. It would have to encircle the whole disgusting mess to be an apt metaphor for Disney's long and continuing receipt of corporate welfare. The true "theme" of this theme park is oppression. Disney is still racist, homophobic, classist, and rotten to the core. It abuses its own workers horribly. Don’t buy anything with the toxic Disney brand on it.
Please research 'Disney subliminal messages'.
Don't just concentrate on physical products when you discuss the dangers of Disney.
This is a very very easy problem to fix. Over 20 years ago I worked for an
American company that sold high tech communications gear to India. Their
import tariffs are tiered based on a VAT or value added tax model. The more
value added outside the country the more import tax accessed. We wound up
sending just parts to India and contracting with a local company to use Indian
labour to build the equipment. We should do that here. If Disney brings fully
saleable products into the US they will pay an import duty equal or higher than
building the product here. They will find it profitable to bring in raw materials and
parts and use US labour to build the product just like the Indians did.
Here are a few points to mention: First, Disney is one company that certain players in the US government, including Bill Clintion, are looking to send to Haiti. The proposed plan is to apply the Shock Doctrine to Haiti by turning it into a garment sweatshop economy...making cheap clothes for companies like Disney.
Secondly, be careful of the term Made in the USA. This term can include US protectorates such as the Marianas Islands, where labor standards have historically NOT been the same (this included stories of young women dying premature deaths from inhaling dust fibers in Gap garment sweatshops).
Thirdly, problems with the Disney company extend beyond where they manufacture their products to the cultural implications of their products. The Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood has addressed their marketing to children- http://www.commercialexploitation.org/
(The environmental implications of their overpackaged, toxic, vinyl and dye laden toys and clothing are worthy of their own separate email.)
We need fundamental economic policy changes in this country that keep manufacturing jobs here and make it prohibitive to continue outsourcing jobs. The full costs of manufacture have to be included in the price of doing business and businesses have to operate with a triple-bottom-line: people, planet and profit.
Boycott Disney seems like a good idea. Let's try it.
The company doesn't seem to have any socially desirable traits, and seems to be bad for impressionable chilldren.
Boycott Disney seems like a good idea. Let's try it.
The company doesn't seem to have any socially desirable traits, and seems to be bad for impressionable chilldren.
Let's see, many of us understand that the USA is the biggest predatory country in the world whose policies are driven by improving the profits of muti-national corporations who are responsible for keeping wages down at home and in overseas sweatshops as well as polluting the planet. But apparently, from the comments above, or below, depending on your preferences, the progressive position is to bolster those companies that do these practices inside the USA rather than outside. And this is for why?