The Imus Resolution: Corporate Decency Had Nothing to do with It

One of the most important lessons that rises from the ashes of the "Don Imus fiasco" is that it appears that America's largest advertisers have finally begun to recognize the impact that the $800 billion black consumer market has on their brands.

As the world now knows, the innocent members of the Rutgers University womens' basketball team were emotionally crushed by Imus's off-handed, mean-spirited, racist remarks and people of good conscience from all over the country rushed to their defense and expressed their justifiable outrage at Imus.MSNBC and CBS Radio, where Imus worked, gave no indication that they really cared. Then, the National Association of Black Journalists stepped up as the first of a wide number of national leadership organizations to call for Imus's dismissal, and MSNBC and CBS Radio continued to send signals that they intended to "ride this one out" with their guy, Don. When Jesse Jackson and other demonstrators started to show up outside the broadcasters' corporate headquarters, that brought only the promise of an Imus two-week suspension from the two networks.

Some cynics suspected that MSNBC, especially, was secretly hoping that the proposed two-week suspension term would be enough time to allow the Imus furor to "blow over" and that they would, eventually, be able to keep Imus, their $15 million-per-year cash cow, on the air.

From the outset, the calls for Imus's dismissal were based on an assumption, apparently erroneous, that our nation's most powerful media companies are guided by concepts of fairness and decency in their corporate decision-making.

Well, in retrospect, it appears that fairness and decency had absolutely nothing to do with the way in which the issue was finally resolved.

The fact is that it wasn't until Rev. Al Sharpton and other protesters started to talk about bringing pressure on "Imus in the Morning" advertisers that "justice" was finally done.

As callous as major corporations can sometimes be in their deliberations, they do know how to count, and the prospect that their continuing support for Imus might threaten their access to the $800 billion annual black consumer market finally drove them to withdraw their advertising budget commitments from the Imus program and, now, MSNBC and CBS Radio were beginning to pay attention.

This was not a minor consideration for the networks. Among the advertisers who talked of stepping away from the program were General Motors, Sprint-Nextel, American Express, Staples, Procter & Gamble, Glaxo SmithKline and Ditech.com. Industry experts believe that General Motors, alone, spent about $690,000 per year on "Imus in the Morning" commercials.

Once the advertisers announced their pullout, Imus was history. For those of us who have long believed that our economic clout is the last remaining leverage African Americans have for achieving a level playing field, the "Imus Resolution," at first blush, seems to have been a successful outcome.

But, it's not that simple. This disturbing, 10-day-long episode raises a number of very important questions for anyone who still may want to believe that the Imus racist meltdown was an exception to the rule in modern America and that we really have "overcome." First, how far will mainstream media now go in providing post-event empathy for their former colleague, the "charitable, hard-working, well-meaning" Mr. Imus? How long must we now be subjected to their concerns that the removal of Imus is,somehow, a sign that the First Amendment is under all-out assault by Sharpton, Jackson and the rest of the "politcally correct" community? Secondly, and perhaps most troubling, however, is this: Given Don Imus's 40-year-long career of racially insensitive and otherwise blatantly hateful radio broadcasts, why, in God's name, were the country's largest advertisers so willing to sponsor his program, in the first place?


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