In 2017, the Disney Corporation entered into a battle with the Los Angeles Times over the Times’ coverage of the company’s business relationships with the city of Anaheim, California. In a brief essay, explain how Disney attempted to retaliate against the LA Times and how the conflict was eventually resolved.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Source material from textbook: In 2017, the Disney Corporation entered into a battle with the LA Times because the media conglomerate didn’t like how the newspaper was covering the company’s business relationships with the city of Anaheim, California. Disney retaliated against the paper by banning LA Times critics from attending the studio’s movie press screenings. (These screenings are so critics can publish reviews on the day that movies are released.)
But Disney quickly had to back off from that ban after movie critics and pop culture writers across the country responded by standing with the LA Times, refusing to attend early screenings or consider Disney movies for end-of-the-year awards until the ban was lifted. All of this controversy only served to promote the story about Disney’s sweetheart relationship with Anaheim that the media conglomerate so desperately wanted suppressed. But this should be among the first lessons in corporate public relations--Don’t give the press an excuse to write about a story you want to go away. As Vox’s Todd VanDerWerff tweeted at the time, “The weird thing about the Disney LAT ban is that it’s turned a local story about Anaheim into national news, which can’t be what Disney wanted.”