Every working day, hundreds of employees of the Walt Disney Company receive the “daily news summary,” which reprints dozens of articles about Disney from around the world. Some days, it can be as long as 60 pages. But some days, too, major stories from major publications are missing, articles Disney executives censor-snip, like Soviet apparatchiks, as unfit for consumption by their workers.
In recent weeks, as the news summary has looked more than ever like Pravda circa ’68, Disney’s delicate relationship with the press has shown signs of spinning out of control-chairman Michael Eisner has become increasingly infuriated over coverage of the company, according to people close to the situation.
Eisner has ample reason to watch his back, and not just in the sense that he’s reported to be traveling with a bodyguard. There’s a book by Robert Sam Anson due out next year, with the working title of The Rules of the Magic; and if a recent piece by Anson published in the New York Observer is any indication, Eisner will be portrayed as capricious, paranoiac, and megalomaniacal. Seedlings of this portrayal had been passed around in Hollywood for years, but it took full flower amid the turmoil of the past year, following the death of company president Frank Wells and the departure of the two top entertainment executives at the company, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Richard Frank. Now, even friendlier articles on Eisner in Fortune, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times allude to a darker side. “They'd built a wall around him,” says one current Disney executive, “and it just crumbled.” […]
