February 5, 2018

Dodge Freaked Out When Someone Made a Video of What MLK Really Thought About Capitalism

Chrysler promptly had the video taken down.

During last night’s Super Bowl, Dodge aired a commercial that used an excerpt of a powerful Martin Luther King Jr. speech over images of working Americans to, you know, sell trucks.  

 

Within hours, Current Affairs, a politics magazine, reedited the video overlaid with a different excerpt from the same speech.

“We are so often taken by advertisers,” King says. “Those gentlemen of massive verbal persuasion. And they have a way of saying things to you that kind of get you in a bind.”

The Twitter outrage has Dodge irked. “You get so crucified, so fast,” Susan Credle, chief creative officer of FCB, told the New York Times. In a statement to the Times, Dodge said that it “worked closely with the representatives of the Martin Luther King Jr. estate to receive the necessary approvals.” 

By the morning, YouTube had taken down the Current Affairs video at Chrysler’s request.

Interestingly, King’s speech is not in the public domain, and Chrysler had to license it from the King estate, which, somewhat controversially, keeps a tight grip on MLK’s words and images. “Critics, including civil rights icon Julian Bond,” former Mother Jones editor Lauren Williams wrote in 2013, “bristle over the fact that “I Have a Dream” is kept under strict watch in the name of controlling King’s image at the same time it’s licensed by rich companies for use in TV commercials.”

Indeed, this is not even the first time they’ve been licensed to sell cars. 

Jennifer Jenkins, director of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke University’s School of Law, says she respects the right of King’s family to maintain their father’s legacy. “[But] EMI Publishing—they have a raison d’être, which is to exploit copyrighted works,” she says. “And that goal may be somewhat at odds with what King would have wanted people to do with his speech.”

The King Center and Bernice King both distanced themselves from the ad, which was agreed to by Intellectual Properties Management, a licensing business set up by the King estate.

Read the rest of Mother Jones‘ 2013 story on the rights to MLK’s speeches here.

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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