The GB News boycott is a turning point

Allister Heath writes:

First it was their implacable, undemocratic hostility to Brexit, then their embrace of wokedom, and now their pathetic boycott of GB News, the centre-Right TV start-up. What is going on in boardrooms across Britain and the West? What has it come to when the likes of Ikea and Nivea cannot tolerate free speech and media plurality, and yet continue to trade in China and Saudi Arabia?

A generation of craven corporate apparatchiks, in thrall to the latest American nostrums, have lost their moral bearings. There was a time when business was conservative-leaning but apolitical, and senior executives voted Tory or, at a stretch, for Tony Blair. Increasingly, this is no longer true: in a historic miscalculation, swathes of British businesses have shifted to the radical Left, embracing its cancel culture and adopting explicitly political mission statements.

We are starting to see this in NZ, with some corporations using their advertising power to force out broadcasters they disapprove of.

Some firms employ the wrong, badly trained people in their social media teams. Instant judgment is rendered by a junior employee, often one who is so imbued with Twitter culture that they no longer realise the difference between social media and the real world. They confuse confected campaigns, as with advertising boycotts, with spontaneous outrage. A better strategy would be to ignore Twitter bullying: the mob’s power is usually illusory.

Good advice.

There is a better strategy for companies that still want to compete in the real world: have no truck with this madness, stamp out all prejudice, embrace absolute meritocracy and instigate a nurturing culture of mutual support and respect. Offices should be ideology-free and devoid of thought-police: the corporate purpose must be to unite people from all backgrounds to make money ethically, not to organise readings of Robin DiAngelo’s abysmal White Fragility and purge dissenters.

Can only agree.