MDB Capital president and chief marketing strategist Lou Basenese joins ‘Cavuto: Coast to Coast’ to discuss Disney’s recent turnaround.
The Walt Disney Company appears to be scaling back its DEI initiatives according to its latest SEC filing – and activist investors are pushing the entertainment conglomerate to go even further.
Disney dropped its “Reimagine Tomorrow” program from their Diversity, Equity and Inclusion section of its 2024 SEC 10-K report. The program was mentioned in the 2023 report, which defines the program as “the Company’s digital destination for amplifying underrepresented voices and features some of Disney’s DE&I commitments and actions.” The program hosted a controversial 2022 leaked “all-hands” meeting in which a Disney executive touting her “not at all secret gay agenda.”
“On my little pocket of Proud Family Disney TVA, the showrunners were super welcoming… our leadership over there has been super welcoming to my not-at-all-secret gay agenda… they’re going hard… I don’t have to be afraid to have these two characters kiss in the background. I was just, wherever I could, adding queerness,” executive producer Latoya Raveneau said at the time.
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Disney appears to be backing away from woke policies (Fox News Digital / Fox News)
Disney’s “Reimagine Tomorrow” webpage, which is still active, says its mission is “amplifying underrepresented voices and untold stories as well as championing the importance of accurate representation in media and entertainment.”
The page also lists racial and gender breakdowns of their content and workforce as of 2021 and boasts of their Business Employee Research Groups which represent employees from different ethnic backgrounds.
“The Walt Disney Company Has Established Business Employee Resource Groups Across 10 Dimensions: Asian/ Native Hawaiian/ Pacific Islander, Black/ African American Disabilities Hispanic/ Latin X Jewish, LGBTQ+, Multicultural, Native American/ Indigenous Veterans/ Military, Women,” the website boasts.
“Disney dropping [Reimagine Tomorrow] from their DEI section could mean they’re walking back their DEI investments, or it could signal they’re hiding them,” Stefan Padfield, director of the Free Enterprise Project for the National Center for Public Policy Research, told Fox News Digital. “Either they recognize that more litigation is coming, or it could be part of a vibe shift.”
Target was recently hit with a lawsuit related to its DEI initiatives as shareholders contend the retailer failed to be transparent about the risks posed by their DEI policies and Pride displays.
“Where is your data that shows DEI serves the bottom line?” Padfield asked of companies that still employ DEI measures.
“The concern about the scrutiny about these questions is built into this movement we’re seeing across companies. The Trump administration announced they’ll investigate nine companies for their DEI practices, and you’re seeing corporations scramble to not be among those nine,” he said.
By scaling back its DEI section in its SEC filing, Disney joins a growing trend of companies from Meta to John Deere that have rolled back or eliminated their DEI initiatives.
The movie, cruise and theme park behemoth has also dropped its “The Disney Look” appearance guidelines from their DEI section in their 2024 SEC filing. The 2023 SEC filing states that the guidelines were “updated to cultivate a more inclusive environment that encourages and celebrates authentic expressions of belonging among employees.”
Disney didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Disney has removed its “Reimagine Tomorrow” section from its recent SEC filing. (Gary Hershorn/Getty Images / Getty Images)
The moves come as Disney reportedly lost 700,000 users on its Disney+ streaming platform in the final quarter of 2024. The entertainment conglomerate has faced backlash for, what some call, its “woke political agenda.” The corporation was sued by America First Legal in March 2024 for allegedly doing “damage to Disney’s brand, properties, and commercial reputation by management’s manufactured misalignment between its woke political and social agenda and the vast majority of the Company’s customers.”
Disney’s move to distance itself from the woke initiative comes as activist investors are pressuring the company to drop its participation in the Human Rights Campaign’s (HRC) Corporate Equality Index.
The HRC releases a yearly survey which grades corporations on their compliance with a litany of LGBTQ initiatives, among them “Equal health coverage for transgender individuals without exclusion for medically necessary care” and “Integration of gender identity and sexual orientation in professional development, skills-based or other leadership training that includes elements of diversity and/or cultural competency.” Disney has had a perfect score on the Equality Index every year since 2007.
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LGBTQ employees and their supporters walkout of Disney Animation protesting CEO Bob Chapek’s handling of legislation in Florida in 2022. ((Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images) / Getty Images)
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Padfield is attempting to get Disney to drop its participation in the survey. Padfield contends that HRC increases its requirements to achieve a perfect score on each successive evaluation, new indexes are released annually, and meeting these requirements could force companies to pursue policies that are bad for business.
“There’s a number of items in the index that in order to get the perfect score really start pushing corporations out on a radical edge,” Padfield told Fox News Digital. “It’s essentially built to work like ratchet… a lot of people’s perceptions is that these companies are just moved further and further left in terms of this radicalism.”
