The Walt Disney Company is reportedly seeking to hire a bevy of new public relations executives as it battles a string of bad news cycles, including financial woes that have led to the layoff of 7,000 workers and its ongoing fight with Florida over the studio’s insistence on pushing the radical LGBTQ agenda on children.
Disney shares are also languishing near a nine-year low, prompting a series of shareholder lawsuits that allege the studio has been deceiving investors by fudging its streaming numbers.
The new job postings, which were reported by the Intercept, include one position at $337,920 a year for a vice president of public affairs to lead a “communications team to assist senior executives in preparing for media events” and “interviews.”
Among the responsibilities will be protecting the company’s “reputation” by developing what Disney calls a “reputation campaign calendar,” which will include paid advertising as well as “earned media” — an apparent reference to planted news stories in the mainstream press.
Another job posting, reportedly for a “senior specialist in employee communications and engagement,” mentions the “development of an “internal crisis communications response playbook.” The job also entails interviewing employees and developing the “best communication vehicles to reach employees.”
The Intercept said it has “reviewed” the job postings but did not say how it came across them.
Disney has faced a non-stop parade of bad news in recent months, as the company has seen its once-sterling reputation among consumers fade away due to unforced errors and culture war controversies.
In Florida, Disney is waging an ill-advised political and legal war with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) over the state’s Parental Rights in Education Law that protects public school students from the radical LGBTQ agenda, which is encouraging children to become transgender at increasingly younger ages.
RELATED — Ron DeSantis Rips Disney Parental Rights Opposition Hypocrisy: They Would’ve Endorsed a Ban on Teaching China’s Uyghur Genocide
Governor Ron DeSantis
Disney has vowed to work to repeal the law. As a result, DeSantis revoked Disney World’s self-governing privileges in Orlando — a corporate perk that Disney has enjoyed for nearly 50 years.
The company is also under fire for smuggling LGBTQ ideology into its entertainment — promoting drag queens, transvestites, and transgenderism in its movies, TV series, and theme parks.
Disneyland Male Employee Dressed in Drag and Greeting Children (TikTok/kourtnifaber)
As Breitbart News reported, Disney is facing lawsuits accusing management of deliberately deceiving investors about the Disney+ streaming service.
One suit alleges that in December 2020, Disney executives “repeatedly misled investors” about just how much money Disney+ was losing and that these “wrongful acts and omissions” brought about the “precipitous decline in the market value” of Disney stock.
Disney+ has been bleeding hundreds of millions of dollars a quarter as the studio attempts to compete with Netflix and other legacy studios in the streaming market. But many of Disney+’s highly hyped shows are falling flat with viewers, and the still-young service lost 300,000 domestic subscribers in the most recent quarter.
Disney CEO Bob Iger also sparked a PR backlash when he recently belittled striking Hollywood actors, saying in an interview that he thought their demands were “unrealistic.” His rather anodyne comment unleashed a torrent of anger from actors, including Ron Perlman and Billy Porter.
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