题目内容:
根据下面资料,回答题: No company likes to be told it is contributing to the moral decline of a nation. "Is this whatyou like to accomplish with your careers?" an American senator asked Time Warner executives recently. "You have sold your souls, but must you corrupt our nation and threaten our children aswell?"At Time Warner, however, such questions are simply the latest manifestation of the soulsearching that has involved the company ever since the company was born in 1990. It's a self-exam-ination that has, at different times, involved issues of responsibility, creative freedom and the corporate bottom line.
At the core of this debate is chairman Gerald Levin,56, who took over from the late SteveRoss in the early 1990s. On the financial front, Levin is under pressure to raise the stock price andreduce the company's mountainous debt, which will increase to $17.3 billion after two new cabledeals close. He has promised to sell off some of the property and restructure the company, but investors are waiting impatiently.
The flap over rap is not making life any easier for him. Levin has consistently defended thecompany's rap music on the grounds of expression. In 1992, when Time Warner was under fire forreleasing Ice-T's violent rap song Cop Killer, Levin described rap as a lawful expression of streetculture, which deserves an outlet. "The test of any democratic society, "he wrote in a Wall StreetJournal column, "lies not in how well it can control expression but in whether it gives freedom of
thought and expression the widest possible latitude, however disputable or irritating the results maysometimes be. We won't retreat when we face any threats. "
Levin would not comment on the debate last week, but there were signs that the chairman wasbacking off his hard-line stand, at least to some extent. During the discussion of rock singing verses at last month's stockholders' meeting, Levin asserted that "music is not the cause of society'sills" and even cited his son, a teacher in the Bronx, New York, who uses rap to communicate withstudents. But he talked as well about the "balanced struggle" between creative freedom and social
responsibility, and he proclaimed that the company would launch a drive to develop standards fordistribution and labeling of potentially objectionable music.
The 15-member Time Warner board is generally supportive of Levin and his corporate strategy. But insiders say some of them have shown their concerns in this matter. "Some of us haveknown for many, many years that the freedoms under the First Amendment are not totally unlimited, "says Luce. "I think it is perhaps the case that some people associated with the company haveonly recently come to realize this. "
An American senator criticized Time Warner for A.its ralsing of the corporate stock price
B.its self-examination of the soul
C.its neglect of social responsibility
D.its emphasis on creative freedom
参考答案:
答案解析: