Media Companies Join Presidential Employment Initiative

A host of major media companies have signed on to a White House effort to hire the long-time unemployed, which the President called for in his State of the Union speech.

The President met Friday with the CEO's of a number of companies who had agreed to help in that effort, which is essentially to pledge that advertising for jobs does not discourage the long-term unemployed and that there are not hiring screens that disadvantage them.

The media companies signed on include AT&T, CBS, Comcast (NBC), Disney (ABC), Time Warner Cable and Viacom.

Following the meeting, Time Warner Cable CEO Rob Marcus made the point that TWC was "reaffirming" its "long-held practice" of providing equal employment opportunities to those who had been out of work for an extended period of time.

"We thank President Obama for including us in the White House event focused on this important labor issue, and have updated our EEO statement to make it clear that job applicants will not be disadvantaged based on their current employment status," he said in a statement.

The White House issued a hiring best practices document that it says over 300 companies have signed on to.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.