An editorial in the New York Daily News yesterday hit out at the Universal Music Group for profiting from artists whose music and actions would seem to incite violence - seemingly focusing mainly on the hip hop artists signed to its hugely successful
Interscope division. The article accused Universal Music execs
Doug Morris and Zach Horowitz, and Jean-René Fourtou, head of parent company Vivendi Universal, of building a business around a culture which condones and participates in violence:
"each has made a devil's bargain to prosper by peddling the destructive and the dangerous".
That article is in response to the highly public feud between **50
Cent and his former band mate The Game, which was allegedly behind two New York shootings last week. Some in the media feel that those events, coming so close to Universal's huge marketing push for 50 Cent's new album, means the label and their artists are seen to glorify violence. As previously reported, those same events also led to Rev Al Sharpton telling reporters earlier this week that he thought media regulator the FCC** should punish artists who are involved in violence by banning their music from the airwaves - "There has to be a way to step in and regulate what's going on with the airwaves and with violence.
We may not be able to stop people from shooting, but we can stop people from profiting from the violence."
However the new pressure on Universal with regards to its relationship with the more violent parts of the hip hop community may be short lived, with signs the media agenda may turn back onto the New York Daily News themselves with a number of New York based civil rights groups reportedly angry with the paper's editorial, which they say had a racist tone.