Delta Signs Licensing Deal With Controversial Lifestyle Website
Jennifer Billock February 27, 2019
Delta Air Lines has signed a contract with controversial website Goop, known for dispensing pseudoscience information that can sometimes be more harmful than helpful—which leaves us asking the question: What’s up with that, Delta? Didn’t you at one point want to be the “world’s most trusted airline”?
Once upon a time, in 2014, Delta Air Lines wanted to be the “world’s most trusted airline”—but the slogan was rejected as being too self-serving, rather than descriptive of the airline itself. Now, there’s another reason to reject the slogan: the company has just signed a licensing deal with Goop to play the website’s podcast during flights. (You may remember Goop from such controversies as the vaginal jade egg, which does more harm than anything else.)
More than 600 Delta planes will be streaming the podcast thanks to the agreement. Eight episodes will initially be available, Fortune reported. The popular podcast will reach about 18 million new listeners with the Delta agreement. Episodes will be hosted by both Paltrow and the site’s chief content officer Elise Loehnen, and will include one-on-one discussions with celebrities like Oprah Winfrey.
But the decision has many justifiably concerned about why an airline would partner with a controversial website:
“As we are in the throes of yet another worldwide measles epidemic and complications from the flu, with pockets of communities suffering, mainly due to widespread anti-vaccination groups spreading pseudo-scientific fears of vaccine-related risks, the pseudoscience offered in the Delta skies may give more ears to unscientifically-based health advice,” Nina Shapiro wrote for Forbes. “As lovely and luxurious wellness products can be, the information is muddied when one takes seriously that any of it is genuine health information.”
[Source: Shutterstock]
Not impressed with the “reporting”...the idea of the article is presented in a slanted way...it’s just more content on IFE and people watching those programs are already going to have a bias towards that type product anyways.. What the author of this hack job piece is basically saying is that content that some people disagree with shouldn’t be supported on IFE .....can the author be so narrow minded as to not see the slippery slope this leads us down. There are literally hundreds of shows, videos, music tracks, and viewpoints that I personally find offensive on every airlines IFE but so what...that is because I have a functioning brain and can apply critical thought to the content I allow in my head... Journalism is dying when content of this quality becomes the new standard .....sadly it won’t change until there is another Rwanda...(wanna bet most under age 30 won’t even understand the referencej