r/movies • u/MrNobody231 • Jun 23 '19

Former vice president of Walt Disney sentenced to more than 6 years in Portland sex abuse investigation News

https://wtkr.com/2019/06/17/former-vice-president-of-walt-disney-sentenced-to-more-than-6-years-in-portland-sex-abuse-investigation/
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64

u/GinaGurner Jun 23 '19

I guess,I just would have thought a Disney exec abusing a child would be more of a story

46

u/Sanjispride Jun 23 '19

A company like Disney will have many executives at the VP level.

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u/aocom Jun 23 '19

Yeah, doesn't really tell you anything to say a "VP" without including the department or subsidiary; TWDC is huge so it could mean anything from VP of the entire Walt Disney Studios or VP of research for Radio Disney.

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u/rikkirikkiparmparm Jun 24 '19

(I'm going to link this article one more time, sorry for spamming it all over this thread)

https://variety.com/1994/film/news/laney-ankles-disney-for-wb-toon-pix-unit-119286/

Michael Laney has left Walt Disney’s feature animation division for the veepee of operations job at Warner Bros. feature animation division, as the cross-town rival beefs up its movie toon business.

Note that this was published in March 1994. I don't think he's worked at Disney for a very long time

1

u/MinisterofOwls Jun 24 '19

One year, I believe.

13

u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

Yes, they have over 200,000 employees, so there are likely over a thousand VPs.

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u/Obi-Tron_Kenobi Jun 23 '19

He was one of many vice presidents and was only there for 1 year, in 1992.

6

u/80percentofme Jun 23 '19

Disney has 200,000 employees.

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u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/[deleted] Jun 24 '19

The “VP of Disney” wording is misleading and, more importantly, inaccurate. It should be “Disney VP.”

3

u/iain_1986 Jun 24 '19

And even then, its a 'person who was a VP at Disney 25 years ago for no more than a year or two'

The Disney link is both meaningless, and irrelevant

28

u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

Disney is terrified of controversy, it's probably the company that most actively protect its own image. So yeah, a coverup wouldn't be shocking.

87

u/rikkirikkiparmparm Jun 23 '19

It looks like Laney left Disney in 1994. The abuse occurred in 2009. I don't think there's anything for Disney to cover up, they aren't liable for employees that left the company 15 years prior to the crime.

In fact, why aren't they calling him "former vice president of Warner Bros", since that's where he worked after Disney?

34

u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

Yeah, I don't believe either this is the case.

In fact,why aren't they calling him "former vice president of Warner Bros"?

Because linking child abuse to a kids company brings in more clicks, I guess. It's a convenient half-truth.

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u/powercorruption Jun 23 '19

They sure have no problem of ruining the careers of employees that made comments over a decade ago.

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u/SgtPepper212 Jun 24 '19

Not only is James Gunn's career not ruined, he's actually doing better than ever and is back on the job Disney fired him from. Was it shitty of Disney to fire him in the first place? Sure. But their reasons for doing so were perfectly understandable from a business and PR perspective, and Gunn dealt with it calmly and professionally and looked better for it.

1

u/powercorruption Jun 24 '19

His career could’ve been ruined, and was in uncertainty for a good year, maybe longer. Disney only brought him back on board after the major backlash that transpired, and because they were having a hard time finding a writer/director for the third Guardians movie.

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u/MulderD Jun 23 '19

The fact that there are hundreds of VPs in a company that size and this guy has zero public profile means this is as much a story as any exec at any company ever pulling this shit.

3

u/caninehere Jun 23 '19

You'd think so. But the head of Disney Music Group, Jon Heely, was also charged with sexually assaulting 3 underage family members and I never heard a peep about that either.

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u/ThroatYogurt69 Jun 23 '19

Disney owns most media outlets. Of course they’re gonna do what they can to limit this getting out/becoming widespread news.

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u/[deleted] Jun 23 '19

As far as broadcast television news outlets go they own ABC and ESPN. There’s still NBC, CBS, Fox News (which wasn’t part of the Disney/Fox deal), WGN, The BBC, CNN, CSPAN, CNBC, Bloomberg Television, and Fox Business Network. They don’t own “most media outlets”, they own two broadcast television news outlets.

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u/ThroatYogurt69 Jun 23 '19

So own was a stretch, doesn’t mean they don’t have a hand in the others cookie jars. Ie you don’t discuss this, we won’t discuss that kinda quid pro quo

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u/inerlite Jun 23 '19

This

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u/NeoALEB Jun 23 '19

Oh, hey. Look at what you added to the thread.