Media Matters – SFU Business in the News – May 29

How SFU Business fared in the news for the week ending May 29, 2009.

National News

• The Marketplace program on CBC-TV did a story on a recall of an athletic support cup that can break and cause injury if hit. “Americans can get their money back, but Canadians can’t.” SFU marketing prof Lindsay Meredith was in the story: “When you put them through his kind of rigmarole, all you’re doing is making an enemy of a customer you worked like hell to get a hold of in the first place. Not too smart.”

• Meredith was also in a Canadian Press story that kicked off the final week of the Braidwood inquiry into the death of Robert Dziekanski, who died after being Tasered by RCMP at Vancouver International Airport on Oct. 14, 2007.
  Said Meredith: “The more they (the Mounties) tried to stick to their party line, the more they tried to obfuscate, the worse it got. It’s a situation where you’ve gone so far down the road now, it’s tougher and tougher to get out of this, and it will not go away.”

• The national edition of Epoch Times reported on a senator’s efforts to limit by law salaries and big bonuses at corporations that receive public funds. The story quoted a warning from Jerry Sheppard, associate prof in SFU Business: “The market for executives is an international one, and you’re competing with other companies in other countries that may not have those restrictions, so it could put you at a disadvantage—much as I like the idea.”

BC News

• Ethicist Mark Wexler was in a Vancouver Sun story about the plight of Max Rose of North Vancouver, who suffers from a very rare form of cancer. It’s a case of an ethical dilemma: the cost of care vs. limited resources.
  “Some people ask, ‘Isn’t it hypocritical to admit we actually put a price on life?’ said Wexler. But. . . . if there is only so much room in a lifeboat to save those who are drowning, if there is only so much money to help the sick, Wexler said society is forced to decide who is allowed on the lifeboat.” The Calgary Herald picked up the story.
  Wexler was also on GlobalTV, talking about the ethics behind two cases in which banks erroneously deposited money into people’s accounts. In one, a man from the Creston BC area promptly told his bank it had accidentally credited him with almost $8 million. In contrast, a New Zealand couple fled to Hong Kong after the bank unwittingly gave them access to $6 million.