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Shareholder Activism, ESG, Divestment, and Right Wing Media Insurrection Encouragement

Hi - I think this is a case of Emperor's New Clothes. Does anyone know of any funds of equities, or shareholder activism organizations, that are acting in some way (management at voting and meetings, divestment, product boycotts, shorting, other) to hold management accountable at major media organizations that have been providing platforms to those right wing media voices who

  • encouraged or tacitly condoned the January 6 insurrection
  • in some clear way have been spreading falsehood (such as by engaging in the lie that the election returns are not valid).

There are so many folks around the world who have been engaged in claimed virtues as to helping build and research "ESG" investments, and other claimed investment products with some moral approach, and yet, here we are, and arguably a black and white preventable horror of our investment lifetimes has taken place culminating in an honest-to-goodness broad-daylight attempt to end the rule of law in the US (not only on January 6, but ongoing, with attempts to call the election results into doubt and attempts to end fair elections in the US), and yet what is happening on this front, to bring immediate and effective pressure to bear on management at the media companies that have figured prominently in providing radio and TV spots to those voices who are the most guilty of promulgating the lies?

kmaz 7 May 12
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I think as opposed to divestment, individuals should just invest in companies that they believe in or socially conscious funds. When it comes to large investors like union pension funds, they could divest or threaten to divest and influence public policy.

Aside from divestment, we also have shareholder activism: large investors, recognizing that many of them are US-based and US-focused in their investments, and recognizing that we are in a situation where we have had an unprecedented broad daylight unacceptable outrageous attempt to end the rule of law in the US, and that some aspects of this are still unapologetically ongoing, and recognizing the extraordinary role in these attempts of some of the companies these investors have invested in, should initiate binding shareholder proposals, as soon as possible, to remove management which fails to remove on-air talent which has supported the insurrection, or which has supported the big lie of a stolen 2020 Presidential Election.

For instance:
Ignoring for a moment the German investor, we have Blackrock (world's largest asset manager) as the other single biggest shareholder of "iHeart Media", which is actually the old reconstituted (infamous to some of us) "ClearChannel"
[finance.yahoo.com]

Investors in ESG and Impact funds which purport to make a social and governance difference, and who are concerned about the fact that the US Government at Federal and State levels is the target of such dastardly efforts, should expect that some of these funds will, on their behalf, and in-keeping with the themes of some of the funds, introduce shareholder measures of the type described above. If Blackrock has any such funds, or if it purports to apply some basic governance criteria to all of its funds, then it is arguable that it should be introducing such measures.

As to the German investment firm, I haven't figured that one out yet. As well, for iHeart Media, it doesn't show up conveniently on the link I gave, but a major shareholder (perhaps through some other financial instruments such as warrants) is elements of the Liberty Media/Group, and those also are quoted, and so can be the subject of much the same sort of campaign.

iHeart Media provides a radio platform for the likes of Beck, Hannity, Savage, Levin, et. al. If any of those radio hosts have been guilty of supporting the insurrection or of promulgating the stolen election nonsense, then let's see some shareholder efforts to remove them from those radio stations, immediately.

We see, literally, thousands and millions of person-hours expended by folks like us on the internet, concerned about the dastardly attempt to undermine the rule of law in the US, but I have not seen a single internet poster, other than myself, try to organize folks to
a) zoom in the role of these radio and tv personalities in providing very strong support for that effort.
b) attempt to leverage the shareholder/impact investing angle.

I'm disappointed in the impact investing community that they have so far not risen more quickly to the occasion. Probably eventually they will get around to it en masse. It may already be too late, and almost certainly will be too late by the time we see them come together.

And yes, divestment is also an angle, but there is more than one angle that can be pulled here.

@kmaz I'm not big on divestment. I will boycott My Pillow, haven't been buying Goya products, wouldn't set foot in a Hobby Lobby.

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