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Just days after Ozy Media announced it would be shutting down – following reports from The New York Times and other outlets about its questionable, unethical, and potentially illegal business practices – the outlet is back in business, announced CEO Carlos Watson on Today on Monday.
“We’re going to open for business,” said Watson. “So we’re making news today.”
Watson claimed that the reversal came after “we talked to advertising partners, we talked to some of our readers, some of our viewers, some of our investors” — who were all apparently fine with the rampant misconduct reported in the Times and elsewhere.
My dear Watson, no one should do business with you or Ozy.
While buying web traffic to promote content online is one thing, misleading your investors about anything, let alone your numbers, is inexcusable. An examination of Ozy’s YouTube page shows that most of its videos had paltry viewer numbers as low as in the single digits. While some videos may perform better than others, the only consistency on Ozy’s YouTube channel is not of hundreds of thousands or even millions of views on many of its videos, but the opposite.
Even worse is impersonating an executive of another company – in Ozy’s case, YouTube – or of anyone in order to get a $40 million deal with Goldman Sachs. That deceit by chief operating officer Samir Rao is likely criminal and should result in legal liability. Thankfully, the FBI is reportedly investigating the unethical call.
New York Times media columnist Ben Smith, who broke the Ozy controversy, rightly wrote, “Trying to fool the world’s most famous bank, even by the hype-ridden standards of the media business, is way over the line.”
Finally, there is no excuse to lying to your employees. Watson and Rao lied to Emmy Award-winning producer Brad Bessey that he would be the executive producer of a program, The Carlos Watson Show, that would air on A&E. Except A&E had already said no to the show before taping, reported The New York Times. Once he eventually found out that the show wouldn’t air on A&E, Bessey quit.
On Friday, Ozy announced it would be shutting down. This resulted in everyone in the company being terminated. They found days later out that the outlet was not actually shutting down just like everyone else: through watching Watson’s announcement on Today. That example of how Watson carelessly mistreats his employees was perhaps the most egregious in the Ozy saga.
At the end of the day, no one should do business with a company such as Ozy that misleads, impersonates, lies and mistreats people.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
