The right to pick and choose who gets interviewed on your property
Nikki Finke posted this on her Deadline Hollywood blog on Thursday:
I just confirmed that Sicko documentary creator Michael Moore was barred from making a scheduled media appearance inside the New York Stock Exchange today. His publicist says it was because he and a group of nurses intended to call for Wall Street investors and Main Street consumers to divest themselves of HMO, health insurance, and drug company stocks. The Oscar-winner and representatives of the California Nurses Association were slated to do a series of interviews with financial media outlets from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange this afternoon.
Finke went on to say she was
very surprised that the NYSE would interfere like this, especially given that these “on the floor” media interviews are commonplace.
Non-sequitur alert! Allowing some media interviews on your property does not imply that you are going to allow all media interviews. The interference is even less surprising given Moore’s anti-business philosophy. Add to that the fact that he would not have been giving advice to investors (as Moore’s people apparently tried to spin it), but merely staging a protest against a sector of the business community. Nothing surprising anywhere there…
On the other hand, Finke does make a good point: since the media interviews went ahead anyway (outside of the NYSE), the ban just gave Moore more attention.
Posted: June 29th, 2007 under Business Beat, Legal Issues, Location Interviews.