On The Mark -- Rash Decisions

When companies are under attack by a newspaper or television news outlet they sometimes do rash things like pull all of their advertising from that outlet. "That'll show them," they think. In nearly all cases it's a bad move. General Motors recently did this with the LA Times. They had been unhappy with reporting by the Times for some time, and a couple months ago the newspaper's automotive writer wrote a rather unpleasant review of some of GM's new cars. The next day GM pulled all their advertising -- valued at millions of dollars. The end result will be that the Times will continue writing bad reviews if they don't like the cars, and GM will have lost a major connection with its potential customers. Seems like a double-whammy loss for GM to me.

So now members of the GOP want to do the same thing with the International Red Cross. They are contemplating pulling U.S. financial support for IRC because of the IRC reports about abuses at U.S. military detention centers for enemy combatants. Signficant dollars, of course. In their minds it's the classic GOP bullying approach -- if you don't fall in line with how we think we'll hurt you.

Yet, all that will happen is that IRC will find funds somewhere else and keep writing reports that reflect bad things if that's what they see. The buck may stop, but it won't stop the IRC. Thank goodness.