As negotiations with employee unions continue and tensions with the city of Anaheim fail ease, the Disneyland Resort has found itself a source of controversy as of late. This was evident at a Tuesday night meeting of the Anaheim City Council where a union-sponsored study titled “Working for the Mouse” was discussed by the council (you can read our live blog recap from the meeting here). The study was also reported on by the Orange Country Register, but Disneyland Resort vice president of communications and public affairs Lisa Haines has taken issue with how the paper didn’t allow Disney a chance to respond. In a letter to the editor printed today, Haines takes the Register to task, alleging that Disney was not contacted for comment on the story. She went on to question the journalistic ethics and standards of the paper publishing what she refers to as a full-page ad.
Below is Haines’ letter in full:
At a time when fair and balanced media reporting is under intense scrutiny, I’ve tried to have faith in the Orange County Register and its historically high journalistic standards.
Unfortunately, that faith was again eroded on April 7 when the OCR ran a full-page “ad” under the guise of reporting that chronicled the alleged findings of a recent union-funded survey of Disneyland cast members.
The paper has published several stories on this biased and unscientific union-funded survey, and OCR leadership is aware of our response. Yet we were not contacted to comment and there was no mention that the survey was paid for by unions — unions for which active negotiations are underway.
The survey results are not representative of our 30,000 cast members and it was conducted by a biased organization with a predetermined narrative.
As the county’s largest company, we expect tough coverage. But we also expect balanced, verified and unbiased reporting — as do the majority of your readers.
Printing this propaganda as fact and giving it a full page — without representing our point of view or the socioeconomic realities of living in Southern California — is disappointing, not just to me but for the state of journalism.