Why not tune into the truth in 2010?
Media companies should bring words and actions into alignment.
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Media - As the Western world continues to be inundated with thousands of ads daily, many of which are for “green products,” consumers may be overlooking the environmental impacts of media giants themselves. |
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Companies in this category, including General Electric and Disney, often have a considerable impact in many different realms. In 2009, GE maintained brands found within the large appliances, airline, electronics, and pharmaceutical sectors along with their media ownership of CNBC, MSNBC, and Bravo (it should be noted that GE sold off its media business to Comcast at the end of 2009). Their different and diverse business units all have varying climate impacts, with each subsidiary facing complex challenges. General Electric continues to rank the highest in this category, much of which can be attributed to strong carbon reduction programs emerging from its Ecomagination initiative. |
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News Corporation also improved this year, in part because of the company’s emphasis on internal educational efforts around climate change issues. Disney and Time Warner showed solid gains with Disney’s investment in renewable energy demonstrating a strong commitment to innovation. With just three more points, Disney will join GE and News Corporation in the Striding category.
After showing progress from ’07 to ’08, CBS continues to remain non-committal to concrete emissions reductions and as a result is at the bottom of the sector. Having not even calculated its emissions, Viacom remains behind CBS. Incidentally, this shows a disconnection to one of Viacom’s major audiences, the youth; as the parent company of MTV, Comedy Central, VH1 and numerous other youth-oriented media outlets that have promoted climate action, Viacom has shown little commitment to dealing with climate change in-house, while its viewers are some of the largest supporters of climate legislation. |
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