The Business Ethics Blog

Check out this story by Peter Foster in the National Post.

In it, Foster rails against George Clooney’s new movie, Good Night and Good Luck, for what Foster thinks is its unjustified anti-corporate slant. The film is a fictionalized account of newsman Edward R. Murrow’s courageous defiance of Senator Joeseph McCarthy. In particular, Foster criticizes the movie’s portrayal of the Aluminum Co. of America (now Alcoa), a sponsor of Murrow’s newscasts who eventually bailed out.

I haven’t seen the movie yet, but Foster’s article points to an interesting topic. Of course, the main reason Hollywood (as if “Hollywood” is an entity with one mind!) sometimes picks on big business is, well, ya gotta pick on someone. Movies need villains. For better or for worse, big business makes an easy target. Frankly, I don’t generally blame movie-makers for helping themselves to whatever boogie-men they can find, at least when they’re doing fiction. But then, GN&GL is a fictionalized account of real historical events.

This warrants more thought: what are the implications, for public perceptions of the corporate world, of portrayals of corporations in fiction (e.g., Wall Street, semi-fiction (GN&GL), and non-fiction (The Corporation)?

(Thanks to Andrew Potter for pointing me to Foster’s story.)